


There's Got to Be a Reason

by imunbreakabledude



Series: Gemillaneve canon divergence [2]
Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Catharsis, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Grief/Mourning, I know the premise sounds weird as hell but please bear with me, Kinda sexy too, Light Angst, Post-Season/Series 03, Pregnancy, Slow Burn, Soulmates, Threesome - F/F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:35:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 49,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28031010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imunbreakabledude/pseuds/imunbreakabledude
Summary: Running straight from the bridge, Eve and Villanelle need a place to hide out from the Twelve, so they head to the last place anyone would think to look for them. When they arrive at Gemma's, they're met with a surprise – and begin to unearth connections that seem too odd to be coincidence.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova, Gemma/Eve Polastri, Gemma/Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova, Gemma/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Series: Gemillaneve canon divergence [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2177232
Comments: 210
Kudos: 237





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, everyone! This is my first ever multichapter fic for Gemillaneve. Technically, this is a sequel to my first-ever oneshot with these three, [The Math of Love Triangles](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26294686), but it's not totally necessary to read that one first.
> 
> A couple notes:
> 
> • This is basically canon-universe, picking up immediately after season 3. However, there are a few changes from canon, most notably the fact that Gemma is alive (duh). The other changes will be clear to you by the end of the first chapter.
> 
> • I want everyone to know what you’re walking into: this is an ot3 endgame fic! If that is not your cup of tea, that's fine, but this may not be the fic for you. However, I have tagged it the way I have because there WILL be a large amount of exploration of each sub-pairing (Eve/Villanelle, Villanelle/Gemma, Eve/Gemma) as part of the story.

It’s not often the doorbell rings unexpectedly.

Gemma’s doorbell ringing typically signals one of a few options. Sometimes, it’s the postman leaving a package Gemma has ordered (online shopping is her worst vice). Sometimes, it’s one of the neighbors to ask if Gemma will water their plants while they go away (of course she will!). Most of the time, when the doorbell rings, it’s a colleague or a girlfriend Gemma has invited over, so she has someone else to share her baked goods with, and so Pompom can see another human from time to time (he does love her, but everyone needs variety, even cats).

It’s even rarer that the doorbell rings ten minutes past midnight.

The first ring wakes her, though Gemma assumes she must have dreamt the sound, and rolls over, trying to go back to sleep. The second ring comes about a minute later. The third, about ten seconds after that. At least it’s not a school night. She rolls out of bed and reaches for a bathrobe, which she knots tightly as she slips down the stairs. She tries to tread lightly so as not to wake Pompom, but the bell must’ve done it – he’s already waiting for her at the foot of the stairs, eager to see who the visitor is.

As a woman living alone, Gemma is not oblivious to the dangers of the world; in fact, she’s experienced a few brushes with death, herself. Not that the neighbors would ever believe if she told them. So when the doorbell rings unexpectedly, she’s wary.

“Don’t worry,” she murmurs to Pompom. “I’ve got pepper spray just here.” She keeps a canister on the small table by the door, so she remembers to take it when going out, but it’s also easily accessible in case a murderer should show up on her doorstep.

Gemma takes a deep breath, unlocks the deadbolt, and pries the door open slowly to get a look at who has decided to drop by at midnight.

“Eve!” squeaks out of her mouth instinctively, before she even processes the sight. But there she is – Eve Polastri. Niko’s wife. Gemma met her twice, two occasions she recalls quite distinctly. She hasn’t seen Eve in the flesh since then, but has to admit Eve has crossed her mind a few times… rarely in a pleasant context.

The other person at the doorstep is quite familiar to Gemma, as well. How could she forget the woman who threatened her life and locked her in a storage unit? _Villanelle_. That’s the name, she knows it, though she can’t bring herself to say it aloud so easily.

“Wonderful to see you, Gemma,” Villanelle answers with a bouncy tone. “May we come inside?”

Gemma grasps the door before her like a shield. Her gaze flicks between Villanelle and Eve. One cheery, one sulking. Neither offers anything in the way of further explanation of why they’re together, or why they’re at Gemma’s after midnight, or why they’re at Gemma’s at all.

After a few seconds, Eve turns to Villanelle. “Told you,” she mutters. “This was a stupid idea. Let’s get out of here before the neighbors see.”

“I… Um…” Gemma stammers. “I’m a bit asleep on my feet, that’s all, but of course you two can come in.” The words come out of her mouth by force of habit. It’s not polite to leave visitors out on the doorstep, so late at night.

The oddity of the situation brings the persistent feeling that she’s still dreaming. And if it’s a dream, there’s no harm in letting them in. It wouldn’t be the first time either of these women had appeared in Gemma’s dreams, she has to admit… Each of them had a sort of profound effect on Gemma’s life, considering how little she’d seen them, before. So it made sense that they snuck into her subconscious. Unresolved feelings, or a lack of closure, perhaps. Maybe inviting them in for some midnight tea in a dream was her subconscious’s way of manufacturing that closure.

Gemma swings the door fully open to allow them in. She pretends not to notice as both Eve and Villanelle’s eyes obviously drop to her stomach. She steps aside and ushers them in, pulling her robe tighter, as if that will hide the curve of her belly.

“Kitchen’s that way.” She points. “I can make you a cuppa, if you like.”

“Shall we take off our shoes?” Villanelle asks.

“I don’t mind either way.”

Villanelle kicks off her shoes – expensive-looking black boots. Eve leaves hers on. For the first time, Gemma makes note of their clothing. Villanelle’s got a striking mustard-yellow sort of cloak on, though she’s untying it at the moment, and hangs it on the coat rack by the door. Underneath, a black sleeveless sweater. Eve’s in a simple winter coat, which she appears to have no intention of removing.

Gemma leads the way into the kitchen, and the others follow. Gemma, Villanelle, Eve, with Pompom bringing up the rear. An odd little train.

While the kettle rattles away, Eve and Villanelle make themselves comfortable at the kitchen table. At least, Villanelle looks rather comfortable stretching out and putting up her socked feet on one of the other chairs. Eve looks ready to bolt at any moment. They aren’t very chatty while waiting for the water to boil.

After placing a cup of tea in front of each of them, Gemma goes to the last free chair and pulls it out, far, then perches on the edge. She waits for one of them to speak.

She waits a long time.

Finally, Villanelle breaks the silence. “How far along are you?”

“Erm,” It takes a few moments for Gemma to find the answer to the simple yet unexpected question. “Twenty-nine weeks.”

Villanelle smiles then bends over her tea, letting the steam waft into her face.

“Is there a man?”

Eve’s question, also simple, sends a chill down Gemma’s spine.

“Obviously there _was_ a man, at some point,” Eve goes on. “I guess I mean to ask, are you with someone… Is there anyone else here?” She gestures towards the ceiling.

“No,” Gemma says quickly. “It’s just me and Pompom.” At the sound of his name, the cat pads over and nuzzles up against Gemma’s leg.

“Alright.” Eve seems satisfied at this answer. Villanelle looks up from her miniature steam-bath, and gives a little nod to Eve. Though tiny, this clearly loaded gesture sends Gemma over the edge.

“What’s going on with you two?” The question that’s altogether too much and not enough.

“Nothing,” Eve responds, almost instantly.

“We just need a place to stay for a little while.”

“You want to stay _here_?”

“Lay low for a little while. Not long,” Villanelle says, eyes widening. “Just two, or twelve weeks.”

“And you came to me. Of all people.”

Eve and Villanelle exchange a knowing look. An oddly knowing look. Of course, it’s odd that they’re here at the same time, together, at all, but then again, based on what Niko confirmed, is it that odd?

Gemma lays her palms on the table. “Are you in danger?”

“No…” Eve says. “It’s more of a… complicated… It’s hard to explain.”

Hard to explain, indeed. The wife of her old coworker, her friend… and, perhaps in some ways more than a friend… shows up on her doorstep at midnight, along with an assassin, (yes, _assassin_ , Niko confirmed as much!) who met Gemma in disguise one night and later nearly killed her and Niko. No danger at all. Does Eve think she’s a total idiot?

“Do you think I’m a total idiot?” Gemma covers her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Villanelle laughs, while Eve stammers a series of syllables that are not, in fact, words of the English language.

“Look. You don’t need to go into details, not right now… But if you’re in trouble…” Gemma bites her lip. It’s risky, but… doesn’t she owe Eve, even if Eve doesn’t know it? “You can stay here for a bit.”

* * *

Gemma has always loved playing hostess, it’s true. For his part, Pompom is incredibly excited at the prospect of overnight visitors, which makes sense, since Gemma hasn’t had anyone stay in… how long _has_ it been? Her parents were in town around ten months ago. Before all this started… before she’d met Villanelle and Eve.

They’ve still offered no formal explanation for why they’re together or what brought them to Gemma’s house, which leaves her to speculate on her own while she makes up the guest bed. If she strains her ears, she can hear them conferring in hushed tones downstairs, but it’s rude to eavesdrop, and besides… she can’t quite make out the words anyway.

Gemma’s left to privately speculate on what brought Eve and Villanelle to her. She recalls the day she met Eve. Which, oddly enough, happened to be the day she met Villanelle. The two incidents live rather separately in her head, since it wasn’t until several weeks later, in the storage unit, that she learned the true identity of “Kim”, the suspiciously friendly new teacher she met in the stairwell.

Gemma’s making up the guest bed to host an assassin. As if this isn’t strange enough, this particular assassin, aside from one particular occasion when she locked her and Niko in a tiny room with no way out, has been rather kind to Gemma. The situation is certainly bizarre enough to be a dream, and yet the longer Gemma’s on her feet, the less she can cling to that belief. Perhaps the most alarming part of this non-dream is that Gemma is significantly less bothered by the assassin’s presence in her house, than by Eve’s.

Eve, who didn’t seem to be a big fan of Gemma’s before, and now…

Gemma shakes the thought off as she smacks the pillows together to fluff them properly. As she places them back at the head of the bed, she hears the creak of footsteps treading up the stairs.

“Cute.” Villanelle says as she takes in the guest room.

Eve grunts something that sounds like, “ruffles”, then steps inside and tests the springiness of the mattress.

“I made up the bed, you should be comfortable here.” Gemma’s about to head for the door, then freezes.

She’s just offered two adult women one bed. Albeit a queen-sized bed, but with no prior indication that they’d care to share it. Too late, Gemma’s past-midnight brain realizes she for some reason assumed Eve and Villanelle are a couple.

“Couch!” She squeaks, a bit too loud.

Eve and Villanelle stare blankly at her.

“I can also make up the couch if you’d like. For one of you…” Gemma’s face warms with embarrassment. Why on Earth would she put herself in this situation? Why did her brain leap to the conclusion that she was welcoming a romantic pair, when in fact she’s acutely aware that Eve is already married, even if that marriage has been strained at times…

A small voice in the back of Gemma’s mind reminds her exactly why she believes they’re a couple. A fantasy. A dream that occurred once but never left her memory. Fervent touches in a stairwell, words exchanged that clearly had meaning to each other… She shakes off the memory. It was an unwanted dream, something clearly not sparked by reality. And certainly not a fantasy she’d revisited, once, or maybe twice since.

Eve and Villanelle exchange a look.

“I call dibs on the bed.”

“What?!”

But Eve’s protest is too late, Villanelle is already flopping onto the mattress. “If you wanted it, you should’ve called it.”

“I’m twenty years older than you, I shouldn’t have to sleep on the couch.”

“Well, _I_ am sleeping in the bed. It’s up to you if you want to join me.”

Gemma decides to exit gracefully from the tension thick in the air and find sheets for the couch.

* * *

Back in her bedroom, Gemma is exhausted yet unable to fall asleep. Maybe she is asleep, after all, if this is all a dream.

She leans over and opens the drawer on her nightstand, pulling out the small notebook contained inside. She opens the cover. Words. If she can read her dream journal, that’s a sure confirmation she’s not dreaming right now.

Gemma is able to recall her dreams almost every night, thanks to actively practicing writing them down in her dream journal each morning. She picked up the habit from a lifestyle guru on some Facebook video, and thought it cheesy at first. Over time, she found it helped her to sort out her head first thing in the morning, so she kept it up.

Truthfully, there’s another reason Gemma has always been interested in dreams. In recording each one, she hopes that she won’t miss any detail, should one of the dreams be significant, as they have been for lucky few individuals, those who have a perfect fit, a destined love, another half waiting for them somewhere in the world.

 _The day you meet your soulmate, they shall appear in your dreams that night_. So the saying goes. The phenomenon is rare enough that not everyone believes in it, and Gemma might not believe in it either, if not for her parents so often recounting the tale of when they realized their soulmate connection. The mere affirmation of the existence of soulmates is a comfort, as is her indulgent and unfounded belief that it might somehow run in the family, but if Gemma’s honest with herself… She’s rounding the corner on her thirties, single and pregnant. If she hasn’t met her soulmate by now, she probably doesn’t have one. Like most people.

 _It’s a blessing to be average,_ her grandmother used to say. _Everyone wants to be special, but those who stick out get cut down to size._ Gemma loved her grandmother very much. For that reason she hadn’t done much to renovate or even redecorate the house, so the space felt like it still had a bit of her grandmother in it.

She stows the journal back in its drawer and turns off the light.

As she curls on her side, and reaches for the extra pillow to tuck under her belly, she hears faint strains of conversation drifting through the wall from the guest bedroom. She’s not endeavoring to eavesdrop, but some words make it through clearer than others.

_Paul… Barcelona… Train… Dasha… Twelve._

The phrases remind her of a particular entry in her dream journal… Not that any of it’s the same, but it fills her with a sense of deja vu… Before she can examine that thought too much, she drifts off to real sleep.

She doesn’t dream.

* * *

Gemma tiptoes down the stairs the next morning (much as she can; she doesn’t have many tiptoeing days ahead of her in this pregnancy, it seems), to find Eve curled up on the couch. Something must have happened after Gemma fell asleep, then, that made her end up downstairs.

She finds Villanelle awake in the kitchen, helping herself to some oatmeal and bananas. “Good morning,” Villanelle says, mouth full. “What are your plans for this fine day?”

“I have to go out, I’ll leave you a spare key if you need it… I’ll be gone most of the day.”

“Where are you going?”

“Doctor’s appointment,” Gemma says. “Then shopping. Need to get some more food, if there’s three mouths to feed for the foreseeable future.”

“You mean, _four_.” Villanelle raises an eyebrow.

Gemma forces her brightness up a notch. “I was wondering if you could tell me what Eve likes. I’d love to make her feel welcomed, you know?”

“You want Eve to feel ‘welcome’.”

“We don’t exactly have the most uncomplicated relationship.”

“What a long way of saying you wanted to sleep with her husband.”

“Shhh!” Gemma leans in close to the table, frantically hushing Villanelle. It’s not so much that that information is a secret, but that she doesn’t want Eve to wake to that. “Look, can you tell me what she might like for dinner?”

Villanelle has to think about it for a minute. “I don’t know. I don’t think Shepherd’s Pie would suit the mood.”

Gemma’s chest tightens. Her breath comes shallow. _“I want the recipe to your Shepherd’s Pie.”_ That one phrase brings it all flooding back. She’s sitting across her kitchen table from the woman who held her at knifepoint and left her for dead.

“Not spaghetti.” Villanelle suddenly shatters the illusion. “You can’t make Eve spaghetti. I want to make Eve spaghetti.” She’s so full of consternation over pasta, it’s almost impossible to believe she’s a killer.

“Okay…” Gemma says, standing. “I suppose I’ll just get a chicken or something, then.”

Villanelle looks up at her, eyes wide. “Can you also get spaghetti?”

* * *

When Gemma returns, bags slung over her arms, both women are waiting for her. Villanelle helps Gemma unpack the groceries while Gemma cooks. It’s an odd sort of family dinner. They eat mostly in silence.

“So you had a sudden urge to be a mother, is that it?” Eve says. “Single mothering is in these days.” She speaks the question down at her plate, avoiding all eye contact.

“Not exactly,” Gemma says. “It wasn’t, erm, my plan.”

“How was the doctor?” Villanelle asks.

“Fine.”

“Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“No.”

“Old-fashioned, eh?” Villanelle chuckles.

“You could say that.” Gemma just wishes they’d get off the subject. Surely there must be anything else to talk about. Since everyone seems to be mostly finished, she rises.

“How about dessert?” Gemma says. “I’ve got a bit of cake left from the other day. Do you like chocolate, Eve?”

“Why are you being so nice?” Eve’s eyes narrow.

“I have the cake to spare, it’s really not a big deal,” Gemma replies with a nervous laugh.

“Not that.” Eve gestures around them vaguely. “All this. Letting us stay here, no questions asked.”

Gemma’s blood goes to ice. It was unclear, before, if Eve _knew_ or not, since Eve seems to be a generally prickly person as far as Gemma can tell. Now, it’s becoming quite evident that Eve does not know. Apparently, Niko never told her before he moved back to Poland…

“I was brought up that way.” Gemma waves a hand and smiles, acting unnaturally natural.

“Any normal human would’ve kicked us out by now,” Eve says, rising from her chair and stalking closer. “No one’s this accommodating, or this stupid. Not even you.”

Gemma has to admit, her ego bruises a bit at that one. “What are you saying, Eve?”

“Innocent act won’t work on me; I’m intimately familiar with the signs. You’re hiding something.”

“Eve,” Villanelle cautions, from her seat.

“No, it’s alright,” Gemma says. Her pulse accelerates, and a surge of adrenaline rushes through her. She wonders if the baby can feel it, too. “Eve’s not entirely off base, there.”

“Ha!” Eve points. “I knew it. Are you with Carolyn? Or the Twelve? Who’s paying you?”

“What? I don’t know who any of those people are,” Gemma says.

“Don’t play dumb _now_.”

“I’m trying to tell you something!” Gemma snaps. “I… I slept with your husband.”

Eve doesn’t move a muscle. It’s like she’s buffering. Meanwhile, Villanelle lets out a hoot of a laugh. “No kidding! You sealed the deal after all?”

Eve closes her eyes, a strange calm on her face.

“Eve? Did you hear what I said?”

“When?”

“What?”

“When did this happen?” Eve says. “When he stayed here? Were you and Niko lying to my face?”

“No! I would never,” Gemma says.

“Then when? Was it after we sold the house?”

“Er…” Gemma says. “Probably a few months before that…”

Eve opens her eyes, and her face finally twists into anger.

Too late, Gemma realizes she’s an absolute flaming moron, and her hand subconsciously went to her stomach. But Eve would’ve gotten there eventually, regardless.

“No,” Eve says. “No fucking way.”

“That’s Niko’s?” Villanelle exclaims. She looks back and forth between Eve and Gemma, enraptured, like she’s watching a movie.

“It was a terrible mistake we made in dire circumstances,” Gemma says. “And at first, I didn’t even… I wasn’t going to… He was married– Why am I even– You know that, God, I’m stupid, and anyway, I kept thinking about how could I possibly tell him, I mean, he was in a fragile mental state after what happened to him – to us–” Gemma pauses, her words choking off as she feels Villanelle’s gaze heavy on her skin. “More than that, I couldn’t say anything because… because I thought you two might still work things out, and well…” Gemma gestures at herself. “ _This_ would probably not help the situation.”

Eve has gone quiet again. Frighteningly quiet. She paces back and forth for a few seconds, then pauses and leans against the table. Villanelle, who has finally decided to honor the gravity of the moment, scoots over and puts her hand on Eve’s, but Eve slaps it away.

“This isn’t how I wanted you to find out,” Gemma says quietly. “I came up with so many different ways of how and when to do it. Suffice it to say this wasn’t any of the plans.”

“You had seven months,” Villanelle points out ever-so-helpfully.

“I wasn’t sure if you and he were still together…” Gemma nervously taps her fingers together.

“No,” Eve says, her voice low and gravelly. “We are not still together.”

“Oh.” Gemma says. “Well, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you want.” She pauses. “It’s the least I can do.”

Eve doesn’t respond, only puts her face in her hands.

Gemma’s always had a habit of babbling to fill silences, which doesn’t let her down in this most awkward silence of her life. “You wanted to know why I’m accommodating, that’s it. Cards on the table. I’m a terrible whore, and I’ll be trying to make up for it for the rest of my days. And I hate to ask, but maybe, erm, once you’ve got a moment, you can get me an updated number for Niko, so I can have an equally terrifying conversation with him?” she squeaks. “I haven’t been able to get ahold of him, since he left St. Theobald’s and went back to Poland…”

Eve finally lowers her hand. Her face is scrunched up and her eyes are shining with tears. “He’s dead, asshole.”

Then Eve’s gone. Out. The door slams behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's your other bit of canon divergence... now you're up to speed ;)
> 
> The premise is really out there! I know! but bear with me, I promise it makes sense! at least in my head.
> 
> let me know what you think, or come chat on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xo


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgot to say this on the last chapter: huge thanks to [Kara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylifeiskara) for beta reading that chapter, and this one as well, and also being my best supporter and cheerleader in all my writing!

Eve is a drama queen, as always. Storming out like that. Villanelle wants to roll her eyes, but then again… if she weren’t this dramatic, she wouldn’t be Eve.

“Aren’t you going to go after her?”

Villanelle looks up at Gemma, standing there, twiddling her thumbs nervously.

“Why?”

“Someone ought to. And I don’t think it’ll be very well received if I go.”

Villanelle grips the edge of her chair for a moment while she debates. This whole mess with Gemma and Niko is really not her problem. On the other hand, if Eve goes running around London and pulls some typical dramatic Eve meltdown, she may attract the attention of any of the myriad people that want her and Villanelle locked up, or tortured, or dead.

So, Villanelle hauls herself up to her feet with a sigh, and holds out her hand. Gemma stares blankly.

“Can I have that spare key now?”

With a squeak of assent, Gemma darts over to a table by the door, retrieves the key, and places it in Villanelle’s hand.

Villanelle hesitates by the coat rack. It’s a brisk night, enough that she predicts goosebumps if she goes out in her sleeveless shirt. However, her yellow cloak, while she pulls it off incredibly, is a little conspicuous for this job. So she grabs Eve’s winter coat and pulls it on while she exits onto the sidewalk.

It’s not surprising Eve’s pulling a stunt like this. She’s been off since last night…

_Villanelle was thrilled that her hideout suggestion was working out, and even more thrilled that the guest bed was actually very comfortable. She was ready to let her head hit the pillow, when Eve sat down on the side of the bed and declared they should find somewhere else to say._

_“Why?” Villanelle intended her question to come out calmly, but with exhaustion pressing at her – it was a really long day – it’s more like a whine._

_“I think she’s hiding something,” Eve said. “She takes us in with barely any questions… it’s suspicious.”_

_“I really don’t think she works for my bosses.” Villanelle paused. “My ex-bosses.”_

_“You’re too smart to not find this strange,” Eve insisted. “Something is up. She’s pregnant, no father in the picture, alright. But she got so weird when I asked her about it. She’s hiding something.”_

_“I don’t think that woman is capable of hiding anything, unless it’s in between those knockers.” Eve let out a loud scoff at that, but then Villanelle added, “She has a glass face. You can see right through it.”_

_“Tell me what you see when you look at her, then.”_

_“I see a woman who is probably more concerned with her missing baby daddy than anything to do with us.”_

_“You think she’s just a regular woman? Nothing beneath the surface.”_

_When someone knows they are about to die, their eyes become very clear. Villanelle had gotten to know a lot of people this way. Normally she finished the job and went on to forget everything she learned._

_But she didn’t kill Gemma._

_Villanelle swallowed, then said, “I’m absolutely certain we can trust her.”_

_“Then we should leave as soon as possible,” Eve said. “Because anyone we can trust unconditionally, shouldn’t trust us.”_

_Villanelle thought that was still an overreaction, but she was tired, and figured they’d argue more in the morning regardless, so she lifted the blanket and reached out to snuggle Eve. But Eve batted her away, and went downstairs._

_Maybe they interpreted that talk on the bridge a little differently._

Villanelle tunes into her surroundings once again, as she clomps down the residential street on the outskirts of London. She pauses at the corner and takes a deep inhale.

Where the fuck is Eve?

Villanelle is not envious of animals on most occasions, but she has to admit, having a bloodhound’s sense of smell would be pretty fucking useful in a case like this. Instead, she’s left to rely on her human asset, her brain. What would Eve do?

Getting into Eve’s headspace is easy-hard. Villanelle understands Eve. Mostly. Once, she thought she did perfectly, and then, suddenly, she didn’t. The trial-and-error phase was less pleasant than she would’ve liked, but now, Villanelle has come to the conclusion that she knows exactly what Eve wants. Better than Eve herself does. However, Villanelle is rarely successful at predicting what idiotic move Eve will pull in trying to _get_ what she wants. Because without fail, Eve never does the logical thing. It’s always a dramatic blowout in the moment, followed by a lecture later, like she’s some level-headed arbiter of acceptable behavior. Villanelle has to laugh at that.

Okay, back to the task at hand. What does Eve want right now?

She just found out Niko cheated on her. Not just flirting, not just a peck on the cheek: penis-in-vagina, sperm-fertilizing-egg cheated. Fine. Not that Eve ever seemed to value that marriage too much, but through a series of rude awakenings following repeated underestimation of his value, Villanelle has gathered that Eve felt a strong possessiveness over Niko regardless. Something of hers was taken, so she’s mad. Villanelle can relate to that.

But Eve didn’t take out that anger on the perpetrator. Instead of screaming, or attacking Gemma, she left. To be fair, it wouldn’t be a good idea to kill Gemma on the spot, at least not the sloppy way Eve tends to kill. Not while they’re lying low. Since Eve couldn’t take out her anger the natural way…

A eureka moment sets Villanelle walking again.

Eve wants to not feel angry. Since she can’t do anything about it, she wants it to disappear.

She can’t have gone far. If Eve, always self-destructive Eve, wanted to not be angry anymore, within a two kilometer radius… Now Villanelle has a target in mind, at least.

A few minutes later, Villanelle stops. A pub. She peers in the window. A figure with dark curly hair hunches over the far end of the bar. That checks out.

Villanelle marches inside just as Eve’s tapping an empty shot glass against the counter, trying to get the bartender’s attention. “Another round over here!”

“We have to go,” Villanelle whispers in her ear.

“Get a shot with me or fuck off.”

“I choose option two. You’re coming with me.”

Eve snorts and continues tapping her glass with increasing intensity.

Villanelle is not an unfun person. To the contrary, she’s quite a hedonist, as several psychiatrists put it to her in a polite, clinical tone. Given this, Villanelle offers fair consideration to indulging Eve in this moment, and ordering a drink for herself. She scans the room. Only a handful of patrons are in the pub tonight, but Villanelle’s eyes stop on a tall, dark-haired man with a stubbly beard sat by himself in the corner.

Without waiting another second, Villanelle squats down, grabs Eve, and throws her over her shoulder, fireman-style. She carries Eve out of the bar, kicking and screaming, ignoring the protests of the bartender about settling her tab.

“Eve, you really need to shut the fuck up,” Villanelle hisses as she hauls Eve back down the sidewalk as quickly as she can manage. “You are drawing so much attention to us.”

“Put me down!” Eve shouts. “ _That’s_ what’s drawing attention to us!”

Unable to even spare a glance behind, Villanelle pushes her legs and lungs to the limit, sprints down the block, and ducks in the first alley she sees. Once they’re safely in the shadows between two narrow walls, she places Eve down on the ground.

“What the hell was that about?”

“Shh! You can’t be going out like this. Someone could see you.”

“No one saw me. There was like, one other person–”

Villanelle slams a hand over Eve’s mouth, silencing her. Eve mumbles protest, until she hears what Villanelle heard. Footsteps.

They flatten themselves against the wall, peering out from the shadows, as a man walks by the alley. The dark-haired man. Villanelle’s pulse raises incrementally as he passes the entrance to the alley, then keeps walking. She lowers her hand from Eve’s mouth. “Only you could walk into a pub with one other person, who happens to work for the Twelve.”

Eve blinks, then shakes her head. “You’re fucking with me. It’s not funny.”

“It’s _not_ funny. It’s not a joke. That guy was my point of contact on a job I did in Belarus, about two years ago. His name is Ivan… No, Ilya.” Villanelle strains her memory. “It was either Ivan Ilyich or Ilya Ivanovich.”

“Fine,” Eve says. “Let’s go find another bar that doesn’t serve twats from the Twelve.” She peers down the road to make sure Iyla-Ivan is out of sight (at least she has _some_ sense left), then marches back out onto the street.

“Eve, you can’t be walking around out here. They might be hiding around any corner, ready to jump out and strangle you.”

“Yeah, what else is new?” Eve spits. “I’ve been in danger ever since I met you.”

“True.” Villanelle has to speed up a bit to keep pace with Eve, who’s trudging ahead with great determination. “Hey, I bet you could get a drink back at Gemma’s. And it would be free.”

“I am _not_ going back there.”

“You’re upset.”

“Now is a really shitty time for you to finally learn a little empathy.”

“Can I ask one thing?” Villanelle stops.

Eve pauses, and faces Villanelle. “I guess I spoke too soon.”

“Are you upset that Niko slept with someone else? Or that he’s dead?”

“Yes.” Eve keeps walking. Like that cleared it all up.

“You two weren’t exactly about to renew your vows when he died,” Villanelle says, following again. Eve doesn’t respond, only pressing forward. “And you’re one to judge; you strayed, too.”

“Are you seriously trying to talk me out of this?” Eve snaps. “Trying to tell me I can’t be upset about my husband cheating?”

“I think there are bigger things to worry about,” Villanelle says. “I don’t understand why it’s so dramatic, with everything else going on.”

“Fine!” Eve’s voice cracks on the single syllable. “I’m a hypocrite. That what you wanna hear? I’m a hypocrite and I’m hurting. I’m a bad person for driving my husband away enough that he’d want to sleep with someone else. I’m a bad person for sleeping with Hugo, and for… whatever the fuck this is with you. I’m a bad person for putting Niko in danger, and I’m the reason he’s dead.”

Tears are forming in Eve’s eyes now, though she blinks a lot and goes to rub them away with her sleeve. Villanelle steps close, and puts her arms around Eve.

“Let me tell you something,” she whispers. “I am the reason a lot of people are dead. So I know what I am talking about in this department. It is not your fault what happened to Niko.”

“It is.”

“Shut up. It’s not.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“When have I ever lied to make you feel better?”

“That’s actually a good point.” Eve laughs bitterly.

In their wandering, they’ve ended up by the bank of the canal. It’s quiet at this time of night; every so often, someone walks by with a dog, but it’s hardly heavy traffic. The water flows placidly underneath a small stone bridge. Eve stares at the surface, like the answers to all the great questions of the universe are contained within the navy depths.

They shouldn’t be out here. Every second they wait is a chance Ivan-Ilya could come back with friends, or a sniper rifle. If Eve wants to be stubborn and put her own life at risk, Villanelle should just ditch her and go back to the safety of the house.

If only leaving Eve were that easy. Every time Villanelle tried it, she failed. Eve’s like a sock fresh out of the dryer. Static cling. Never get rid of her.

And how could Villanelle leave after Eve turned on the bridge?

Was that really only a day ago, that everything changed? In that one moment, when Eve turned, it became very clear to Villanelle that she was completely screwed.

In retrospect, Villanelle knew Eve would be the death of her from the day they first met. Or perhaps that night, in her dreams. The Asian woman with amazing hair that got to her that much with a single look by a bathroom mirror. Villanelle knew Eve would hurt her someday, though she didn’t know _how_. Now she finds that remaining to find out all the new ways Eve can hurt her, is what makes it worth it to go on.

And Eve says she doesn’t know what love is.

“Why are we here?”

It’s unclear if Eve means that question in the literal or metaphysical sense. It’s also unclear who she’s actually talking to, since she directs it out at the water. But Villanelle decides to answer like it’s directed at her. “It is a really beautiful view.”

“We have to go back.”

“We can stay for another minute, if you want.”

“No,” Eve says. “For our own safety, we have to go back to the woman who is pregnant with my dead husband’s child.”

“Are you going to kill her?”

“Are _you_?”

“Are you asking me to?”

“Are you asking me to ask you to?”

Villanelle tilts her head. “What are we talking about again?”

“Let’s just go.” Eve remains still, looking at Villanelle expectantly.

“I…”

“Spit it out.”

“I don’t think I remember the way back.”

Eve shakes her head and starts leading the way. Not long after, her teeth start to chatter. The night air is finally starting to get to her. She thrusts a hand out at Villanelle and says, “Give.”

Villanelle looks down, and remembers she’s got Eve’s jacket on. “No.”

“It’s mine.”

“You should’ve taken it before you went out.”

Eve doesn’t reply. A minute or so later, she starts making a funny sound. Not really like laughing, not really like crying. She leads them around a corner, and then Villanelle recognizes her surroundings again. They’re back on Gemma’s street.

Villanelle pulls the key from her coat pocket and unlocks the door. As it swings open, it reveals Gemma sitting on the couch, though she springs up immediately at the sound of the door.

“You’re back,” Gemma says, her tone bright as she dabs a finger around the corners of her red-rimmed eyes, doing a very poor impression of someone who was not crying a moment ago.

“We’re staying as long as we want,” Eve declares, kicking off her shoes and letting them skid against the wall.

“Yes, of course, you’re welcome–”

“No,” Eve snaps. “You’re not offering it. I’m demanding it. You don’t get to feel good about yourself for this.”

“Right. Of course not.”

“I’m going to bed,” Eve mutters, then, turns back on a dime, and snaps, “ _Of course_ ,” right as Gemma was going to say it. A bitter laugh follows her up the stairs.

It’s funny, Villanelle muses, how Eve seems to think of herself as the opposite of Gemma, when really they’re kind of the same. Not the _same,_ literally, because no one is the same as Eve. But…

The _slam_ of the guest bedroom door echoes from above. Villanelle looks to Gemma, who looks ready to cry again at any moment, though she restrains herself.

“Guess it’s my turn on the couch tonight,” Villanelle says, trying to lighten the mood. Gemma doesn’t laugh. Rude.

Villanelle pulls the couch into order. Eve slept here last night, so it’s not a total wash. It smells like her. That’s not so bad. Meanwhile, Gemma keeps walking back and forth between the kitchen and the living room.

“Sorry!” she breathes, on her third loop. “I’ll let you be in a moment – just a few more things to tidy before I…” Her voice chokes off, and her eyes grow shiny.

“Are–” Villanelle leans forward, but Gemma waves her off, and covers her mouth. She screws up her whole face, trying to hold the emotion in like holding the neck on a balloon to keep the air from rushing out.

Villanelle turns around, leaning over the back of the couch to face Gemma. “I don’t care if you cry.”

Gemma looks like she wants to say something more, then her lips tighten into a thin line. She turns and zips back into the kitchen to turn off the lights, before heading for the stairs.

Villanelle thinks back to that day in the storage unit. She looked in Gemma’s eyes, and Gemma knew she was going to die. She saw right inside of Gemma. Something that she saw made her stop.

As she lays her head on the pillow, trying by force of will to decide the couch is equally as comfortable as the guest bed, a memory comes back to her. A whisper, an echo, a dream.

Is it the weak strains of Gemma crying as she creeps up the stairs, morphed by her fading consciousness? Or a memory of what she really heard that day, with her knife pointed at Gemma’s throat?

_“Oksana.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the pot starts to simmer...
> 
> let me know what you think in the comments, and/or come say hi on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xo


	3. Chapter 3

Sleeping in is not a casual act for Eve. It is distinct from _oversleeping_ , which is an unfortunate accident. _Sleeping in_ , by contrast, takes force of effort. It ought to be easy, pleasurable; after all, Eve’s been through enough in the last month – the last year, honestly – to need another full year just to rest and recover from it. But it’s never easy to sleep when one wants to, and Eve does not achieve the deep, dreamless, undisturbed sleep she longs for.

Instead, she wakes to noises at 6:25 AM, as her burner phone on the nightstand informs her. The bathroom is right on the other side of the wall that her headboard is up against. She hears footsteps, a door closing. The shower goes on. The toilet flushes. Some time later, the shower goes off. A door opens and closes, followed by another. Footsteps down the stairs. Clinking of something being poured. A meow. Strains of human baby-talk. A ding that might be a toaster oven. Finally, mercifully, the sound of the front door.

Eve squeezes her eyes shut harder. She rolls over, then changes sides again two more times. She pulls the blanket higher, over her face. She lies still as a rock, but never completely drifts off.

When she squints at her dim phone screen again, it’s 8:55.

Eve rolls out of bed reluctantly. She stumbles into the bathroom and turns on the shower. She tries not to look at all the signs that indicate whose natural habitat Eve is intruding on. The paw-print shower curtains. The Vibrant Red Color-Lock shampoo. The bottle of prenatal vitamins next to the sink. Every glance reminds her of where she is and why she’s stuck here, and consequently makes something throb very painfully behind her eyebrows and also makes her feel like her chest might explode. Eve squeezes her eyes shut and showers blind.

The outfit she arrived in is beginning to smell unappealing, but Eve would rather walk out in the London winter buck naked than venture into Gemma’s wardrobe, so she remains towel-clad while she pokes around the second floor in vain hope of an alternate solution. Several minutes later, she’s rewarded with a cardboard box at the bottom of a closet marked _CHARITY_ in neat Sharpie letters.

She descends the stairs dressed in an oversized men’s t-shirt with a Tommy Hilfiger logo and a pair of blue flannel pajama pants.

Villanelle is sitting at the kitchen table, and it seems she also made “arrangements” for herself, though she took a different route. She’s in a dark pattered silk robe, that probably was from Gemma’s closet and not a charity box, judging by how the bottom of it doesn’t even reach Villanelle’s knees.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.”

Eve shuffles across the room and pulls the fridge open, assessing the contents.

“The bed is nice, huh?”

Eve doesn’t bother responding. There’s not much in the fridge that looks good, besides some of the chicken leftover from last night, though she may tear into that despite the early hour.

“Gemma told me to tell you there are blueberry muffins in the tin over there.”

“When did she have time to make muffins?”

Villanelle shrugs. “We have the house to ourselves until she’s home from work.”

This obvious statement causes Eve’s wall of denial to crumble.

They can’t leave the house, because of the weird Russian guy, Ilya or something, who works for the Twelve and just happens to be hanging out in this neighborhood. Being stuck inside would be annoying enough, without every inch of this house reminding her of the perky little woman that her husband decided to impregnate because she was just that perky and big-titted and cute. As she realizes this, Eve mutters something like, “ _Godfuckingdamnit_ ,” and slams the fridge a bit harder than necessary. Prompting a reaction from Villanelle, who Eve had almost forgotten was there.

“Are you still upset about Niko?”

Eve wants to laugh at that. Like it’s a condition that will be a yes until it’s a no. _Yes, I’m upset today, but ask me again tomorrow._ Like upset has an expiration date. But Villanelle is sitting there, wide-eyed, apparently having asked the question in good faith, so Eve has to answer. “It’s just one thing after another,” she says. “I’m sure something else terrible will happen to distract me from Niko. Because before Niko, there was Kenny, and before Kenny–”

“Who’s Kenny?”

“Not funny.” Eve kicks Villanelle, appalled that she’d play dumb just to cut Eve off before the next name she was going to say… Bill.

“I’m not kidding,” Villanelle says. “I have no idea who that is.”

“Come on. You know Kenny. Carolyn’s son.”

“Carolyn has kids?” Villanelle exclaims. “Your boss Carolyn? She doesn’t seem like the type.”

“Jeez, stop playing around. Kenny. You know, _Kenny_.”

“Repeating it. That will definitely help.”

“He did research, and hacking, and other computer stuff. He was on the team at MI6 when we… wait. No.” Eve pauses and frowns. “I sacked him before you joined.”

“Sacked him, why? Seems like you care about him a lot.”

“Because he thought hiring you was a bad idea.”

“Oh.” It’s Villanelle’s turn to frown. “Good for you, sacking him!”

* * *

Fucking hell, the blueberry muffins are _delicious_. Eve eats four, but if anyone asks, she only had two and the rest mysteriously disappeared (maybe the cat did it). They pair surprisingly well with Eve’s inspired mixture of instant coffee with some ancient bottom-shelf bourbon she found in the back of one of the cabinets.

“Kenny!” Villanelle comes running down the stairs excitedly, now dressed in a new tunic-capri ensemble, which probably is actually meant to be a dress and full-length pants, pilfered from Gemma’s closet. “I remember! That boy who took the pictures of me for Billie’s Instagram!”

“That’s Hugo,” Eve groans back. “Forget it.” She plops on the couch and reaches for the TV remote. Gemma’s TV is rather small, and, as Eve discovers after about forty-five seconds, only gets twelve channels, half of which are full of static. Eve refuses to let this stop her. She settles on one local network with charmingly inane programming and lets her eyes glue to the screen. Let the noise lull her into a pleasant hypnosis that has nothing to do with her present circumstances. She sinks deeper and deeper into the trance, only vaguely aware of the noises of Villanelle exploring the house in the background.

Halfway into a daytime soap, Villanelle plunks her ass down on the couch next to Eve. “I found something you might like,” she says. She pulls something flat from behind her back and drops it in Eve’s lap. A laptop.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Research,” Villanelle says.

“Research what, exactly?”

“I don’t know. Bad guys?”

Eve snorts and pushes the laptop onto the couch.

“I am disappointed in you,” Villanelle says.

“Let’s not go there, again.”

“I can’t believe you’d give up like this.”

“I’m watching TV.”

“Eve Polastri doesn’t watch TV when there are bad guys to catch.”

“The bad guy I chased for the last year is sitting right next to me. I think I can sit for an episode or two.”

“The Eve I know doesn’t do that.”

“Go on then. Tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

“Investigate,” Villanelle says. “Chase. Study. Eve stuff.”

“Then you ought to do _Villanelle stuff_ ,” Eve fires back. “Go murder someone and leave me alone.”

“It’s not like that anymore,” Villanelle says quietly. “It’s not like it used to be.”

“It’s not like it used to be for me, either.”

Eve’s out of her depth, here. Sitting next to each other on the couch is not _Eve and Villanelle stuff_. The past two days has been the most time they’ve spent together, _ever._ When working on the Peel case, there were a couple of days of prep where they were together for hours at a time, but always with others in the mix – Carolyn, Konstantin, a slew of other MI6 specialists helping to craft Billie’s identity. Sitting on this couch, just the two of them, is dangerous territory. It harkens back to a time they sat on a bed, just the two of them. Or walked through beautiful ruins, just the two of them.

Eve fiddles with the remote in her lap. “Watching daytime TV is Eve stuff.”

Villanelle ponders for a minute, then relaxes and makes herself comfortable on the couch. “Watching a gorgeous woman watch TV is Villanelle stuff.”

Eve shivers at the casual compliment. Why, she can’t quite say. Any inkling of desire harkens back to their dangerous days. Even in the time they’ve spent together lately – from the ballroom, to the bridge, to here at Gemma’s – it’s been rather chaste in comparison with their previous encounters. Almost like friends. The taste of that word is bitter in Eve’s mouth. She isn’t sure what word is appropriate to describe the two of them, but it definitely isn’t “friends”.

This train of thought is heading nowhere good, so Eve pumps her well-oiled mental brakes. She quickly turns the TV off and cracks open the laptop instead.

Gemma’s laptop is a model from only a few years ago, but Eve is dismayed to find it’s terribly cluttered. The tidiness of the house is in stark contrast with the mess of her digital landscape. Her desktop image of Pompom in a party hat is barely visible, buried beneath two layers of files, not a folder in sight. An open browser window reveals 5,765 unread emails, most of which appear to be coupons and advertisements from stores, mixed with a few chain mails begging Gemma to forward them to ten friends.

It takes all of Eve’s goodwill not to click _Move All To Trash_. She signs out of the email account before closing the window, to make sure she isn’t tempted again.

A small voice in her head says: _you killed someone. Technically, two people. Deleting some emails would hardly be the heaviest sin on your record, hypocrite._

She takes a deep breath and opens a new window. She’s greeted with a homepage full of ads. Gemma’s tailored ads paint a clear picture of her: cat toys, sensible dresses and cardigans, tacky decor, scented candles, baking supplies, and at least two very unsubtle ads for vibrators.

While illuminating in their way, these are not what Eve would like to be researching at the moment. “How am I even supposed to see through all these popups?” she growls.

Though Eve was talking to herself, Villanelle heard a cry for help and leaps into action. “Give it to me.” She wrestles the laptop from Eve’s reluctant grasp, scrolls and types for one minute, then returns it back to Eve. There’s a new browser window, and all the ads are gone.

“How’d you do that?” Eve murmurs. “The Twelve trained you in tech skills too?”

“Eve,” Villanelle gives her a withering stare, “I downloaded AdBlock.”

Rather than ask what that means, Eve seizes control of her ad-free browser. Now that she can navigate more easily, Eve could search out what country they might flee too, perhaps one without extradition. Instead, in the absence of ads, she finds herself drawn to Gemma’s bookmarks menu.

“These are so sad,” Eve scoffs, scrolling through the list. “’ _Great Recipes to Cook For One’… ‘Ten Tricks to Cheer Up Your Furry Roommate’… ‘Classroom Crafts Every Teacher Needs’_ …”

Eve pauses at the next bit in the list. A folder. The first semblance of organization on Gemma’s laptop, deep in her bookmarks list. The folder is titled “Soulmates”.

She clicks. The folder contains almost as many pages as the sum total of the rest of Gemma’s uncategorized bookmarks. It seems Gemma has a special interest. Eve would start poring through them out of sheer curiosity into this obsession, but she notices Villanelle breathing over her shoulder, and quickly moves the cursor away.

“Soulmates,” Eve mutters. “What a load of crap.”

“You don’t believe in that?” A trace of hurt laces the surprise in Villanelle’s voice.

“You _do?_ ”

“I guess. People say it has happened to them.”

“It’s too incredible. Real life isn’t like a fairy tale.”

“Look, here.” Villanelle reaches in front of Eve, leaning close enough that her hair is practically in Eve’s face; the smell of her surrounds Eve. She takes the trackpad of the laptop, and clicks on one of the bookmarks. “This story. The couple had the same dream of each other… The night after they took an elevator together, they both dreamt of getting stuck in that elevator together, for a whole night, talking the whole time. They were already in love before they met again the next day.”

“See, that’s the crap I’m talking about. No way that’s real.”

“You think they made this all up? Why would they do that?”

“To get this story written about them, for one. People will do anything for attention.”

“What about the other people that don’t get news articles written about them?”

“It’s a comforting delusion,” Eve says. “To believe there’s some magical reason you belong with your spouse. The sad truth is, most marriages are a meeting of two broken people and there’s nothing magic about it. Just compromise.”

“So Niko was not your soulmate?”

Eve wants to strangle Villanelle for that leading question. “No,” she says. “I didn’t have some fantastical dream of Niko teaching me to play bridge the night we met. Not that I recall, anyhow.”

“I don’t think you’d forget.”

“That’s another thing I find hard to believe in this little fairytale,” Eve says, pointing at the screen. “So they both have this exact same dream, _and_ they both remember it perfectly? They pick it out as significant and not some random vomit their brain threw together? Dreams are weird as shit and can cast anyone from your life. My childhood dentist was in my dream the other night, does that mean I should look her up and propose?”

“Not if it wasn’t the day you met. You are not paying attention to the rules, Eve.”

“Point is – how do they perfectly get to that conclusion right away?”

“Maybe they don’t. Not right away.”

“Or if they just lost it by the time they woke up.” Eve laughs. “Hey, maybe everyone in the world has a magic soulmate, but it’s only a few who recall the dream and live out their happy ending. What a stupid fluke.”

“Why are you being so mean about this?”

“I’m not,” Eve says. “Why are you being all… mushy? You can’t really buy into this crap.”

“Comforting delusion,” Villanelle mutters, then stands, and stomps off to the kitchen.

Eve watches her go, then blinks, and focuses again on the laptop. Gemma has an awful lot of bookmarks in this folder. _“Ten Clues That You May Have Met Your Soulmate”. “Soulmates: A Scientific Perspective.” “Met at Five, Married at Fifty: A Soulmates Story Spanning Decades”_. And on and on.

She closes the laptop and walks to the kitchen. The cat, who was napping on the stairs, hops down and follows her as she goes, mewling insistently. The fluffy gray tabby has some sickeningly cute name, what was it Gemma called him… Pompom? He nuzzles around Eve’s legs, purring. She nudges him away with her foot; now isn’t the time. Disappointed, Pompom stalks away, back to his spot on the steps, leaving Eve alone in the kitchen with Villanelle.

“Hey.”

Villanelle’s got the fridge open, head stuck inside, looking for snacks. She doesn’t answer.

“Anything good in there?”

Villanelle closes the fridge door with a low _thud_. “Not really.”

“Perhaps a change of subject–”

“I took a flight back to Paris,” Villanelle says suddenly. “Got in around midnight. Went up to my apartment. My bed there was quite comfortable.”

Eve nods, because she recalls it was indeed comfortable, though she’s a bit confused as to where Villanelle’s going with this.

“I took off the nurse uniform. Hung it up in my armoire, next to the catering uniform. I keep my work clothes in careful order. Put it on the hanger, did up the buttons.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I _remember_ ,” Villanelle says. There’s a cool edge to her voice, now. “I put on my silk pajamas, my night cream, and laid in my bed. I fell asleep quickly, which was odd, because usually after working I am excited all night. But I slept quickly and deeply and I had a dream. I was in the nurse uniform again, the one I had just put away. I was on the toilet. I opened the door, came out of the stall, and it was _deja vu_. There was a woman with the most amazing hair. And I had seen her before, though I didn’t say anything the first time. This was a second chance. So I asked, ‘Who are you?’ She said, ‘I’m Eve. Who are you?’ And I said, ‘I am probably your worst nightmare. But you can call me…’”

“Villanelle.”

It all comes flooding back to Eve at once. She remembers the same dream, which she attributed to her brain attempting to sort out the lethal blend of fear she experienced after coming upon the bloody show in Kasia’s hotel room, followed by the excitement of Carolyn’s job offer. She recalls another moment, weeks later, when her suitcase returned from Berlin, and she held that glittering, cut-glass perfume bottle in her hand. _LA VILLANELLE_. She instantly recognized this as Villanelle’s name, though she didn’t know why at the time.

“I knew you had it,” Villanelle says with an impish grin, though the flicker in her cheek muscles suggests she didn’t know; not _really_.

It’s appropriate, of all places, that this should happen in a kitchen. It’s not the same kitchen, but with that house gone and sold, it’s an acceptable substitute. There’s still an oven, a fridge. The resemblance is enough to echo times gone by.

Villanelle’s eyes drop to Eve’s mouth. She doesn’t move.

“What are you waiting for?”

“You.”

By instinct, an army of retorts gather in Eve’s throat, but she doesn’t voice them. This isn’t Villanelle’s classic boundary-pushing banter of before. The word doesn’t come with a smirk and a shot, but rather with an openness, like all the muscles in her face that usually work at deception have dropped away, leaving something real on the surface, for once. Eve looks, really takes it in, and she finally understands: Villanelle has been waiting an awful long time.

 _This is why the whole notion of soulmates is absurd,_ Eve thinks. And she would say it aloud too, if what followed were not so embarrassing. _Just because I’ve wanted to, just because I’ve imagined it too many times, more than I should… Just because I dreamed it, and you dreamed it, and that means it’s meant to be or something… Just because one time, in a panic, my mouth touched yours, doesn’t make this not awkward._

Slowly, carefully, Villanelle’s hand meet’s Eve’s by her side. She’s tried so hard to wait, but her patience is finite, and can’t remain stock still while Eve sorts things out. Her fingers lace with Eve’s own, cold at first, but warming quickly, while the space between their bodies diminishes.

Villanelle remains what she has always been. Eve’s tormentor. Her almost-killer. Her fantasy. Her soulmate. Apparently. Now, here she is in Eve’s hands and Eve’s supposed to… what, exactly? Make like it’s their wedding night?

“Shh,” Villanelle says.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re thinking so loud.”

“You can hear it? What was I thinking, then?”

“Not words,” Villanelle says. “Noise. Like gears grinding.” Villanelle demonstrates, a guttural growl.

“If we ever did this… I thought we’d be in danger.”

“We could be,” Villanelle says. “We are.”

“Pressingly.”

“That can be arranged.”

“At each other’s hands.”

“Even easier.”

It’s not Villanelle’s lips pressing into Eve’s, softer than ever before. It’s not Villanelle’s hands guiding her, narrow yet strong, one on her shoulder and the other on the small of her back, lowering her onto the wooden table. It’s not the smell of her, which is… her, only her. No fancy perfume or woody stench on her today.

It makes so much sense that Eve feels it really doesn’t make sense at all.

Villanelle is beautiful. That’s the first time Eve has let herself truly appreciate that fact on its own, not couched in a contradiction. _She’s beautiful – but deadly. She’s beautiful – but forbidden_. Other conditions or not, it’s true. She lets herself truly appreciate each of Villanelle’s traits for the first time. Her brown eyes, that depending on the circumstance, can be so full of emotion or so empty, hollow, hauntingly so. Right now, they’re like stars, like galaxies. Her blond hair falls in a sheet with just the tiniest bit of frizz from the warmth in the house, from their proximity to one another. Body heat. Eve is a part of that.

Eve’s breath hitches as she thinks of the other palpable effect she’s had on Villanelle’s appearance. Her gaze drops, and maybe Villanelle can hear her thoughts after all, for she twists her torso away, and lifts her shirt, affording Eve the first few of that spot ever since she pulled a knife from it. A tiny red line. It hardly seems big enough to have let out the amount of blood that pooled on the bed, the floor, and all over Eve’s hands, remaining caked into her nail beds for a day afterwards. Then again, she has spent enough time twisting in the mirror to look at the equally innocuous line on her own shoulder, which accounted for days of lost memory while she was out and weeks of recovering from the surgery to remove the bullet. Sometimes, the wounds that are smallest on the surface run the deepest.

 _Maybe that’s what a soulmate is_ , Eve thinks. _A wound so deep, it never heals_.

Eve knows she will heal from Niko some day. Not soon, maybe not for a long time, but her body’s systems will do the work and reconstruct the caverns he left when he vanished from her life. The rebuild will be slow and inconsistent, but it is fathomable.

Rebuilding from Villanelle would be impossible.

And that’s all Eve needs to know to give in.

* * *

The sound of keys in the door shatters their peace.

Instantly, Eve’s swinging her legs over the side of the table, pulling up her pants, shaking out her hair. Villanelle does little to reconstitute herself other than wipe at her mouth with her sleeve, so by the time the door swings open, it doesn’t take long for Gemma’s face to go from calm greeting, to shock, to confusion, to desperately trying to hide her shocked confusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more! stuff! happening! 
> 
> let me know what you think
> 
> or you can find me on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xo


	4. Chapter 4

It’s not so much a surprise to Gemma to find Eve and Villanelle entangled (for lack of a better word) as it is to find them dressed as they are (in what seems to be some of her own clothes, and some clothes that she was holding from the school clothing drive?), halfway on top of the kitchen table.

Neither Eve nor Villanelle makes any move to explain. In lieu of frantic cries of “It’s not what it looks like”, Gemma feels compelled to provide a distraction herself.

“Good afternoon, how was work–I mean, what am I saying, you weren’t–well, school was fine, and it seems like the two of you occupied yourselves well–I mean–I’m sorry–I…”

Villanelle merely blinks, while Eve looks about ready to kill Gemma, though not any more so than she’s looked that way since her arrival. If only Gemma could think of the right words that would make this not-uncomfortable, but–

“Ah!”

“What is it?” Villanelle furrows her brow in response to Gemma’s cry.

“The baby’s kicking!”

Gemma lets her work bag go, and by the time it hits the floor, Villanelle has already vaulted across the room and is kneeling next to her, one hand pressed against Gemma’s stomach. “Whoa, it’s strong!”

“Yes,” Gemma murmurs. “Have to run to the loo about five times an hour with this little tap-dance going on…”

She looks across the room to Eve, who is still leaning against the edge of the table, reserved and unreadable (a step up from murderous; Gemma will take it).

Villanelle presses a cheek to Gemma’s stomach, right as the baby launches another kick, harder this time. “You’re strong, little asshole,” Villanelle chuckles, backing a safe distance away. Then she lifts her chin to look up at Gemma. “Can it hear us?”

“I suppose so. Some books say so.”

“Hey, baby. Guess what?” Villanelle addresses the bump with a conspiratorial grin. “Eve and I are soulmates.”

Gemma’s breath halts. Did she hear that correctly?

Luckily, her own reaction is overshadowed by Eve suddenly walking upstairs without a word.

“Ignore her,” Villanelle mutters. “Eve always needs something to be angry at.” She says this not with the cadence of explanation, but rather the cadence of discovery. Villanelle blinks, taken aback for a moment by her own comment.

“I suppose she needs a bit of space,” Gemma adds. “It’s an odd situation.”

With every heartbeat, one word pulses over and over in Gemma’s ears. _Soulmates. Soulmates._ She should have seen that coming, and yet, here she is, blindsided and blushing, while an assassin pokes and prods at her baby bump.

“You and Eve,” Gemma manages, slowly. “Was this… good news?”

“News, yep,” Villanelle says. “Good, depends on who’s asking.”

“I asked you.”

“‘Good’ isn’t a strong enough word.” Villanelle, deep in thought, runs her hand back and forth. Somewhere it went from being extremely weird for Gemma, to kind of nice. “This baby is going to be a tough one, I can tell. And tall.”

 _Like its father,_ Gemma knows they’re both thinking. It’s strangely kind of Villanelle not to say it. Or maybe she’s just distracted by something else. Either way, she seems to have no plans to move anytime soon, so Gemma might as well make conversation.

“You … erm… enjoy children?”

“I remember when my mother was pregnant with my younger brother. I was so upset when her belly got big enough that I couldn’t sit on her lap anymore.”

“She sounds wonderful.”

Villanelle’s head snaps up to look Gemma in the face. “She was a cunt and I’m glad I killed her.”

It takes several seconds for Gemma to recover words. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Villanelle murmurs, stroking again. “You didn’t do anything.”

“I mean, I’m sorry that happened to you.”

Villanelle slowly rises to her feet and regards Gemma with a look that if Gemma didn’t know better she might call _caution_ or _fear_ or even _appreciation_.

“Every child deserves parents that love them,” Gemma says. “What a mess I’ve made. I should’ve told Niko from the start.”

“Just because some of his sperm got in there doesn’t mean he was necessary,” Villanelle scoffs.

“But maybe if I’d told him, he might’ve been somewhere else, maybe he’d be alive, maybe…”

“‘Maybe’,” Villanelle declares. “That word means nothing. You know who loves ‘maybe’? Hack psychologists. _Maybe_ if my mother loved me, I wouldn’t be an assassin. ‘What if’ is nothing and regrets are stupid. Here you are, you can’t go back. But once that baby comes out you can treat it nice.”

“Thank you. That’s very sweet.” And maybe it’s the cursed hormones, or maybe it’s that the whole news that Niko is dead is still very new, or maybe it’s the incongruity of the woman who nearly killed her saying the absolute kindest thing Gemma’s heard in the past year or maybe decade of her life, but tears begin to well up in her eyes.

She thinks of what Villanelle said last night: _I don’t care if you cry_.

So she doesn’t stop.

* * *

No one sleeps on the couch that night.

Gemma doesn’t _try_ to eavesdrop, but with the walls so thin, and the baby’s movements making it quite hard for her to fall asleep, some words trickle through.

“Why’d you have to tell her?” is one phrase that makes it through clearly. “I was excited,” is another. “She’s not a part of this.” “She’d find out sooner or later.” And more of the sort.

Then, grumbles of disagreement.

Then, coos of assent.

Then quiet.

It seems like they sorted it all out.

Gemma lies awake for a while after that.

* * *

Gemma wakes at 6:45 every day to get ready for school. Her routine is well-oiled, from shower to makeup to breakfast for Pompom to breakfast for herself. But the first step of all is the most important.

First thing each morning, she rolls over, reaches for her dream journal and a pen from the beside drawer. _September 27 th._ _Stress dream at the supermarket_ , she jots in hasty cursive. _Villanelle was there. Pulled out a knife then morphed into Eve. Chased me down the veg aisle. Stabbed a cabbage, I think – Woke up somewhere in the middle_.

 _September 28 th. Old maths teacher Mr. Potter and Pythagoras were over for tea. There was some disagreement over china selection_.

_September 29 th. Post-apocalypse, Britain was completely overrun by sentient trees. They hated humans and made us their slaves. Wish I could remember more; it would make a good book._

_September 30 th, _she notes down in shorthand: _The one about losing Mum and Dad again._

Gemma likes to read back from her past dream journal entries, every so often. Dreams are odd in that they’re realer than reality while you’re in them, impossibly strange in the moments following waking, then, sometimes, they circle back around to a degree of truth when you read them months or years later.

The early pages of her journal are dog-eared and worn, in fact, from how often and how fondly Gemma pores over them. As she flips through, the pages stutter at one spot, due to the gap left by a page Gemma ripped out. She didn’t care to read that entry over; even flipping past it made her embarrassed. Only the first few sentences are readable on the previous page, which Gemma didn’t want to destroy because it also contained a description of a delightful dream of a house made of marshmallows which Pompom was quite fond of (in the dream, that is).

 _February 4 th_. _Last night was Teachers’ Night, and either this dream was spectacular deja vu, or I’m not quite sure where it began. Niko was there, and I met his wife. That part was normal. In the stairwell, this new substitute teacher named Kim (pretty if a little oddly dressed) asked for a cig. Then she started asking me about Niko, whether I fancy him, and giving some rather forward advice, but here’s where it begins to fall apart: somehow it ended with us kissing. Her lips were like nothing I ever_

Unfortunately, though torn out and thrown away months ago, the rest of the entry lives vividly in Gemma’s head. The physical action with Kim, who became Villanelle. Eve’s sudden entrance. The physical action with Eve. The physical action with _both of them_. Gemma’s no blushing debutante; she’s had sex dreams before, even some with women, but this one was uniquely shameful because of how much she _liked_ it.

Never mind that the subjects of that dream she’s tried so hard to put out of her mind are sleeping in the next room. That seems more like a dream than half the entries in this journal. There’s got to be a reason. But if there is, Gemma can’t fathom it.

* * *

Gemma readies herself for the final day of the school week. Friday is a half-day, because the administration is having a conference in the school building in the afternoon, which means Gemma gets some blissful daylight time to herself. Well, not really to herself. She may have to run to the shop again because the cupboard empties much faster with two guests in the house.

It took a few days, but everyone in the house seems to have caught on to her schedule. Villanelle seems to be an early riser by default, whereas Eve didn’t start appearing in the mornings until Wednesday, presumably because Villanelle getting out of bed woke her, too.

“You do your thing and I’ll do mine,” Villanelle is mumbling to Eve over a bowl of oatmeal when Gemma descends the stairs after showering and dressing. “You don’t need a chaperone.”

“You, on the other hand, _absolutely_ need a chaperone.”

Villanelle lets out a clipped laugh at that. Then, she notices Gemma. “Good morning.”

“You two are… going out?” Gemma says. Though she may not have gotten much clarity on the details of their situation, their fighting over the past two days seemed to center around the notion that merely being out of doors was too dangerous.

“If Ivan-Ilya is actually looking for us specifically – and that’s still an _if_ ,” Villanelle says, “he has probably expanded his search radius by now, so long as we are careful…”

Eve snorts. “You just really want to go outside, don’t you?”

“Don’t you?” Villanelle fires back at Eve.

“Fuck. Yes,” Eve submits.

“Where are you going, Eve?” Gemma asks.

“Clothes,” Eve says. And Gemma understands why: Eve has spent the week working through successively less optimal prospects from the charity box, culminating in her current outfit, which appears to be a boy’s football uniform. Gemma is far too afraid to invite Eve to borrow some of her clothes, but on the other hand, Villanelle needed no invitation. Right now she’s in Gemma’s favorite robe, and in fact, one of the few that still fits her well at this stage in her pregnancy. But standing up to Villanelle is almost as frightening as attempting a kind gesture towards Eve, so Gemma keeps quiet on both fronts.

“Oh,” Gemma says. “Well, if you’re going out, I may be back before you for once. It’s a half day.”

While Gemma puts together her own breakfast, Villanelle explains _her_ plan for the day: she is going out to retrieve some hidden stashes of cash; she has many small bundles hidden in various locations for if she needs to go on the run. “Because I think ahead,” she explains with a smirk.

“Where are they?” Eve says. “Like, give me an example.” When Villanelle remains stony, Eve scoffs, “Seriously?”

“Secret stashes only work if they are secret, Eve.”

As Gemma rinses the breakfast dishes in the sink, Villanelle descends the stairs in her chosen disguise for the day. Gemma is already familiar with Villanelle’s skill at putting on personas, but the transformation still strikes her, given how it rearranges pieces from her own closet into a totally unfathomable person before her.

She’s wearing one of Gemma’s dresses (pre-pregnancy, obviously), which is full-length but barely hits Villanelle’s knees. Calf-high boots. Big sun hat. Sunglasses. Big gaudy earrings. Heavy makeup. The effect is something like Audrey Hepburn, if she was an Instagram influencer. All together, the ensemble that would probably look ridiculous on most people looks like high fashion bolstered by the utter confidence with which Villanelle wears it.

“Aren’t you going to attract some stares with that?” Gemma says, her cheeks warm.

“The best way to hide is in plain sight,” Villanelle says as she plucks the last muffin from the tin on the counter. “When you look this good, no one questions you.”

Villanelle has a lot of stops ahead of her, so she claims, so she breezes out the door leaving the others dazzled in her wake. Gemma watches Eve watch Villanelle leave. _What must it be like to have **her** as a soulmate?_ Gemma wonders. But then she catches Eve catching her looking, and averts her gaze.

Villanelle leaves a bit of an awkward silence in her wake, so Gemma decides to make an effort with Eve as she begins to pack her lunch bag. “So are you going to the shop then? Debenhams?”

“Don’t exactly have the cash flow to go on a shopping spree,” Eve says. “Going to pick up some old clothes.”

“From the house, or– right, you got a new place, didn’t you.”

Eve grunts a vague affirmative. “Had a tiny flat, that they’re almost certainly watching, but most of my shit’s still in the storage unit.”

Instantly, Gemma’s throat becomes drier than the Sahara, so she stalls by filling a glass of water and downs her pre-natal vitamin so that she won’t sound too croaky when she finally responds. “How convenient.”

“How about driving me over there after school?”

It’s the first thing Eve has asked for since staying there. And Gemma promised, over and over, that she’d help Eve in any way she could. And Eve _did_ ask almost sweetly. Maybe she doesn’t realize what she’s truly asking of Gemma.

“Of course,” Gemma says.

Then curses herself all day long.

* * *

When Gemma returns to pick Eve up from the house, she rushes into the car bundled up in a jacket, scarf, sunglasses, and a baseball cap, which Gemma isn’t even sure where Eve found because she’s pretty sure she has never owned a cap like that.

“Well?” Eve says. “What are you waiting for? You know how to get there.”

Maybe she _does_ realize what she’s asking.

Gemma parks out front and lets Eve out. Mercy of mercies, Eve doesn’t hesitate and heads towards the long alley of unit entrances, content to retrieve her clothes on her own.

After an initial sigh of relief, Gemma finds that she does not, in fact, feel very relieved. Anxiety creeps in, starting at her fingertips, inching up her arms little by little, threatening to crush her once it gets to her lungs. Before she knows what she’s doing, she’s fumbling with the lever to open the glove compartment. Beneath a few napkins and the user manual for the car sits a pack of months-old cigarettes.

“I shouldn’t.”

She reaches, then withdraws her hand.

“I wouldn’t.”

Her right hand seems to have the funny idea that in fact, _she would_ , the way it’s inching back towards the compartment. Then, Eve’s face appears right outside the window, rapping on the glass. Gemma lets out a yelp and slams the glove compartment shut, hiding the pack in her purse.

“Come on,” Eve says through the glass. “It’s more than I can carry in one go.”

“I’d really rather wait here.”

Eve gives a look that demands more, so Gemma adds, “You know this is where, erm, where Niko and I were… trapped.”

Eve is nonplussed. “You got out fine.”

Gemma has no rebuttal for that. “Yes, we did.”

Eve frowns, then beckons. “We’ll be out of here faster if I don’t have to make multiple trips.”

This is how Gemma ends up walking down that long hallway once again. Her heart beats like a jackhammer. This hallway is a popular setting for her dreams – nightmares, really. Not the unit itself, where she was trapped for the better part of twenty-four hours; that prison rarely features. Instead, it’s this hallway, white walls and doors with green lining, that seems to stretch on forever. She never dreams of being trapped. She’s always in transit. Coming or going, Gemma’s never sure, as it stretches into eternity.

At least in those dreams, she’s alone, so following Eve is a strange comfort in that Gemma knows she’s awake. This horrible scenario is no dream. It’s excruciatingly real.

Stopping in front of the unit that Gemma remembers all too well, Eve pulls out the key and unlocks the door.

The room is more crowded than she recalls, which makes sense if Eve and Niko had to move all their things out of the house. Boxes are piled so high, there’s hardly room to step inside, which Gemma takes as a blessing. But in between cardboard boxes with hasty scrawls of _Dishes_ or _Books_ , certain landmarks from her last visit remain visible. The guitar, the tennis racquet, and the couch. The couch, the couch, the _couch_. The big brown couch with its patterned upholstery covered in plastic.

The couch where she sat, staring down the point of Villanelle’s knife. The couch where Niko said he didn’t love her. The couch that Gemma was absolutely certain was going to be her final resting place, as that knife hovered closer and closer, sweeping back and forth between her and Niko. The couch where she let out the biggest breath of her life after they were spared: _“she would never forgive me if I hurt you, would she?”_ The couch where she watched the door slam shut and lock, where she watched Niko pound uselessly against the metal for ages. The couch where they both screamed until they could scream no more. The couch that, for the second time that day, seemed that it may be her deathbed, albeit in a much slower fashion. The couch where in hopelessness and desperation, two people who knew full well they did not love each other had sex that was just okay to keep their minds off of oblivion. The couch where they sat and slept mostly in silence for another twenty or so hours after that until the door creaked open and blinded them with the light of day and ended the most bizarre terror of their lives.

Eve is saying something, but she sounds very far away, and Gemma can’t make out her words.

“I can’t,” Gemma murmurs. “Not here. Not here with you.”

“With me? Why…?” Eve’s face darkens from confusion to fury as she understands. “This is where it happened, isn’t it.”

Gemma nods, or at least tries to nod, though she can’t feel most of her body so it’s hard to be sure.

It’s not like it’s news that it happened. But somehow, Gemma hoped to spare Eve the setting. The extra layer of detail that adds to the mental picture. Or maybe she wanted to spare herself the process of recounting it. But Eve knows now, and she looks like she wants more answers. Gemma swallows. She tells.

“Niko and I, we thought we were left for dead, honestly. After an hour of calling for help, we figured it could be days ’til someone heard. We knew we might not make it.” One she begins, the words spill out faster and faster, like they’ve been swelling up inside her for months, just waiting to burst out. She couldn’t stop if she wanted to, now. “When you’re in that desperate state, you make… different decisions than you would otherwise.

“When we got out, we were both a bit shaken. Niko more so. After the paramedics said we were basically alright, he left without saying a word. So, naturally, I gave him a bit of space. He was out of work for a while. I tried calling. No answer. I didn’t press.

“When I found out I was up the duff, I did work up the nerve. I called and he answered. Think I managed to get out ‘Hello, how are you lately’ before he said, ‘my wife was shot.’”

Eve’s face goes ashen. Gemma pauses, giving her a chance to jump in if she wants. After several seconds, it seems like she doesn’t.

“Didn’t seem the best to break the news after that. Didn’t seem like he needed more things to worry about, so I put it off, longer and longer. Past the first trimester, it seemed perhaps better to wait to tell him until the bloody thing came out… and then…”

“And then we showed up.”

Eve takes a breath in, and out. Gemma waits for further response, but Eve turns and begins sliding boxes around, pulling a few marked _E_ from the back row. The more boxes she moves, the more of the familiar backdrop comes into view. As the scene becomes more vivid, so does Gemma’s anxiety. At some point Eve must notice how quick her breath has gotten, or how stretched her lips, because she finally turns to Gemma and says, “Are you alright?”

“I try not to think about it too often, because when I do, I can’t make sense of it…” Gemma begins, “that Villanelle is staying in my house, after she nearly killed me.”

“She nearly killed me too,” Eve says, offering Gemma a box. “The ‘nearly’ is how you know you’re stuck with her now.”

“How do you…” Gemma takes the box from Eve, finding it’s relatively light – a small kindness, coming from Eve. “How do you look at her the same, after that?”

“I don’t.” Eve says. She hoists her boxes with a grunt and heads back to the car.

As she follows Eve back down that long-but-not-infinite hallway, Gemma realizes it was a stupid question to ask someone about her soulmate.

* * *

Eve puts the radio on in the car. She hums along to some song. She doesn’t talk.

Maybe it’s unfair of Gemma to want anything in this situation. She is the one who wronged Eve, after all. But damn it, she _wants_ anyway. She wants closure. After digging up the biggest trauma of her life for a couple of old boxes of clothes, it seems fair to ask.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Gemma begins, while they’re stopped at an intersection, as if ambushing Eve in the seat next to her. “But I want you to know it would not have happened if we were not about to die. I found him attractive. That’s true. But I’m not that sort of person. I never even would’ve thought of it, if Villanelle hadn’t put the idea in my head weeks before.”

Eve turns to her with sudden interest. “What do you mean?”

“She was there. You didn’t see her? She wasn’t with you?”

“She was _where?_ ”

“At Teachers’ Night,” Gemma says. She remembers to keep her eyes on the road just as a car zooms past her in the other lane.

Eve’s voice is steely and commanding. “Tell me what happened.”

“She came and chatted with me. I mean, she was dressed up, didn’t say ‘hello, I am an assassin’. But she was friendly and asked a lot of questions about Niko and started telling me to go after him,” Gemma squeaks, tightening her grip on the wheel. “Which was pretty odd at the time, but I suppose it makes more sense now.”

A sudden _SMACK_ draws Gemma’s eyes away from the road, for just a second – Eve slapping the dashboard. “I _knew_ she was there!”

Then she gets quiet again, and turns up the radio. Gemma’s afraid to ask anything more, for Eve is no longer humming along but seems to be mumbling something to herself.

Closure.

* * *

As they bring Eve’s boxes back in the house, they find Villanelle is sprawled, legs over the arm of the couch, fanning a wad of bills, pounds and Euros, between her fingers. She sits up excitedly as soon as they enter. “What did you get?” She starts tearing into the boxes as soon as Eve and Gemma set them down.

“I take it you completed your errand without trouble?” Gemma says, but Villanelle is too distracted in Eve’s clothes to answer.

“Aha!” Villanelle exclaims, holding up a black-and-white cocktail dress. “I knew you’d keep it.”

She stretches is between her hands, looks it over appraisingly, then pulls it until it tears at the seams. Gemma is confused and a bit afraid, until Villanelle slips a hand inside the lining of the dress and pulls out a thin stack of cash. “It pays to think ahead,” she proclaims, with a wink at Gemma.

Eve folds her arms and stares Villanelle down, unamused. “You were never going to tell me, were you?”

“Don’t be dramatic, Eve.” Villanelle sits on the floor, looking through the rest of the box. “I gave you the dress in the first place. I can get you another if you’re that upset over it.”

“It was _you_.”

Villanelle looks up now, confused.

“ _You_ locked them in there. Niko’s sperm got up her tubes because of _you_.” Eve’s voice is layered with an icy fury, which, though terrifying, is almost thrilling when it’s directed at someone else rather than Gemma.

Villanelle curls her lip. “Graphic.”

“And before that, you were trying to sic her on Niko… Using her… Trying to break up my marriage. You won’t stop at anything, will you?”

“That was ages ago,” Villanelle says. “Get over it!”

Eve throws a pointing finger in Gemma’s direction. “How can I be ‘over it’ when his child is growing inside her?”

“Come on! I didn’t stick _my_ dick in her!”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“I did so many worse things, Eve. You have got to be kidding over this.”

Their words continue. After falling asleep to the sound of their conversations every night this week, their back-and-forth washes over Gemma like white noise (though right now the level is more like a storm, than static). All at once, the exhaustion of the day – teaching, confronting her prison, telling Eve the truth – hits her body like a truck, and she stumbles over to sit on the steps. Pompom crawls onto her lap, but she nudges him to the side, and pulls out her purse.

The fighting. The shouting. The woman who wronged Gemma and the woman Gemma wronged. The two women who, it’s increasingly obvious, had their own torrid saga before they ever met her, and will surely have another saga after leaving her, and Gemma just had the misfortune to be standing in the path of their little hurricane.

These two women are soulmates, and Gemma has none.

She pries open her purse. She looks at the pack of cigarettes. She’s got a lighter somewhere in the kitchen drawer. It’s been seven months. That’s a proper effort. No one can fault her for a small lapse, can they?

The noise in the living room and the noise in Gemma’s brain become one. She takes the box in her hand. She pulls out one cigarette. She hauls herself to her feet, and–

The doorbell.

Which promptly shuts up all the other noise.

Eve and Villanelle look at each other. Then, they look at Gemma.

“It may be a neighbor,” Gemma says. “Darshita from next door drops by sometime to share some basil from her garden.”

But they all know it may well not be Darshita, so without any more bickering, Eve and Villanelle hurry up the stairs. The bell rings again, and Gemma squeaks, “Coming!” but goes to answer as slowly as she can manage, until she hears the door shut signaling the fugitives are safely hidden upstairs.

Standing on the front steps is a professional-looking woman of perhaps sixty, with cropped brown hair, in an immaculate white coat. “Gemma Pierson, I presume?”

“Yes?”

“My name is Carolyn Martens. May I have a few minutes of your time?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh oh here comes the plot!!!
> 
> My Gemma chapters always turn out the longest, it seems. More characterization to fill in, I guess.
> 
> If you want to know more about that entry in Gemma's dream journal, you can read it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26294686) ;)
> 
> let me know what you think, or find me on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xo


	5. Chapter 5

Villanelle presses her ear up against the door of the guest bedroom, straining to hear. Unfortunately, not much is audible from downstairs, besides Gemma asking Carolyn how she likes her tea.

“Carolyn talks so quietly,” she grumbles. She reaches for the doorknob, but Eve grabs her by the wrist.

“Are you crazy?” Eve hisses. “She can’t hear you skulking around.”

Villanelle rolls her eyes. “I’m not stupid, Eve.”

She waits for the kettle to boil, and as it whistles, she cracks open the door.

Then, she carefully crawls over the carpet to the top of the stairs – a perch that remains safely out of view from the kitchen, but allows for much clearer eavesdropping.

As she hunkers down on the edge of the top step, pitches and sounds coalesce into words. “Thirty weeks,” Gemma says.

“Congratulations,” Carolyn replies. “Is it your first?”

“Yes.”

“Mm,” Carolyn pauses. “My first was rather difficult. Painful towards the end. Took her time in the final stretch. My second entered the world with much less fanfare. But I suppose that may be due to their respective personalities.”

“Eve,” Villanelle hisses.

“Shhh!” Eve’s command is a little less convincing, though, given how she’s crept out to listen beside Villanelle.

“You didn’t mention Carolyn has _two_ kids.”

Eve hushes her again, and Villanelle obeys, because she wants to hear the next bit of conversation.

“You teach at St. Theobald’s school, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Were you acquainted with Niko Polastri?”

 _Keep it cool, Gemma_ , Villanelle thinks. Of course their situation rests on the ability of that glass-faced woman to successfully lie to the human lie detector that is Carolyn Martens. If Gemma couldn’t even manage to keep the fact that she rode Niko secret from Eve for twenty-four hours, even when it was in her own best interest, odds aren’t looking good on her keeping anything from Carolyn. Villanelle’s gaze flicks around the landing, taking stock of her options for weapons if she needs to kill Carolyn in a minute or two.

“We were friends,” Gemma says. “Until he left the school. Can I ask why MI6 is interested? Has something happened to him?”

 _Good, Gemma_. Villanelle can’t help but smile a bit. She’s remembered what she’s not supposed to know.

Ten or so seconds go by before Carolyn answers. “Did you ever meet Niko’s wife?”

“No,” Gemma says. “I mean, yes. Technically. I hardly know her. I only met her a couple of times. School events.”

“You have not seen nor heard from her lately?”

“What is this about?”

This isn’t good. Gemma’s getting antsy. She’s letting her own discomfort show, and at this rate it won’t be long until Carolyn realizes she’s hiding something.

“Eve Polastri is missing,” Carolyn says. “She was one of our own, and recently, she vanished. We’ve been following up with her contacts, and Niko’s, to see if anyone has any idea what happened.”

“MI6 must have better ways of tracking someone than asking _me_.”

“You may think that,” Carolyn says. “But we only get to the extreme possibilities once we exhaust the mundane. Most of the time when someone goes missing, the explanation is rather boring. They may be simply out of town. Or still in town, laying low. Most cases, they’re still in contact with at least one person from their former life.”

“Then why such concern?”

“We hope for the mundane solution, of course. But in Eve’s case, there is a… precedent. A reason to suspect foul play.” Carolyn pauses. “I believe you and Niko met her.”

“She’s talking about _me_ ,” Villanelle whispers. Eve elbows her.

“That woman, that… assassin,” Gemma says. “You think she got Eve? Killed her?”

“I hope not,” Carolyn says. “That’s why I am sincerely hoping to discover her in another place. So please, Gemma. If you have even the slightest notion…”

It seems cruel to wait for Gemma to crack under this pressure. Villanelle wishes she had a proper weapon to end this quickly. Not much within eyesight seems to be of use, but perhaps if she charges down into the kitchen she could get her hands on a knife. Or take Carolyn with her bare hands. Hardly ideal, and she has to hope Carolyn didn’t bring a gun, but…

“I’d love to help, Ms. Martens. But I haven’t been in touch with Niko since he left our school. I heard he moved back to Poland. Have you already looked there?”

Villanelle’s minor exhale of tension is dwarfed by Eve’s huge sigh of relief. Now it’s Villanelle’s turn to spit a “ _shh_ ”.

“That is disappointing,” Carolyn says. “I’d best move on, then.”

“Don’t you want to finish your tea?”

“As you can imagine, I have quite a lot of other people to talk to.”

Footsteps move closer. Villanelle and Eve both shimmy back from the steps, quick and quiet as they can, as Carolyn and Gemma cross back towards the front door.

“May I ask,” Gemma squeaks out. “What happens if you exhaust the mundane, and you haven’t found Eve?”

“You may not.” The door opens. “Thank you.”

The door closes.

* * *

Villanelle finishes Carolyn’s tea, since it’s still hot. It’s best if one person tries to stay calm, while Eve is ranting enough for two, or three.

“I suppose it would be silly of me to ask why you’re hiding from MI6,” Gemma says.

“Yes, it would,” Villanelle says cheerfully.

“Like the Twelve weren’t enough…” Eve growls as she paces in circles around the table.

“Who are the Twelve?” Gemma says.

“My old bosses,” Villanelle offers. “They are the rock, and MI6 is the hard place.”

“Oh,” Gemma brightens with understanding. “The Twelve are Scylla, and MI6 is Charybdis.”

“Can we stop trading metaphors and focus?,” Eve snaps. “Thanks to Ivan or whoever, if he saw us that night, the Twelve might know we are in London. But they don’t know Gemma. Carolyn knows Gemma, but she has no proof we’ve been in London at all since we last saw her.”

“So no one has the whole picture,” Villanelle says.

“I don’t want to wait around until one of them figures it out,” Eve snaps. “We have to go. We have to run.”

“There’s no rush…” Gemma says.

“Again?” Villanelle groans. “I just got settled.”

“Don’t fuck around,” Eve says. “You know we have to go.”

“I don’t see why you can’t stay here,” Gemma says.

“Gemma.” Eve stops and pivots to stare Gemma down in her seat. “I know you don’t get this yet, but these are people that want to _kill_ us. Not metaphorically. They want to murder us in cruel and unusual ways. They will not hesitate to kill you too. This is for your own good.”

“Stop talking down to me!” Gemma fires back with surprising force, rising from her chair to meet Eve face-to-face. “I know I’m not already on whatever crazy level you two are on, but I don’t have to be a spy or an assassin to know there’s only one way out of your little predicament, and it’s not _running_. If you run, they chase.” She shoots a look at Villanelle. “Did you know humans evolved the ability to run long-distance for hunting purposes? So they could chase down more agile prey, like an antelope. Tire them out, then kill. I may not know who _they_ are but I’m guessing _they_ can take shifts until they corner you or tire you out.”

Villanelle glances over at Eve, stunned into silence.

“Don’t be an antelope,” Gemma finishes. “Be a possum.”

“Ew,” Villanelle murmurs.

“That’s a pretty speech," Eve says. "But we need action, not words.”

“Action. Exactly,” Gemma says, her voice steadier than Villanelle’s ever heard it. “You’ve got to die. And I want to help you.”

Villanelle looks to Eve again, to gauge her reaction. She’s quiet, still. Which says a lot for Eve. “What do you think?”

“There might be something there,” Eve mutters.

“Brilliant!” Gemma breathes, her serious demeanor breaking into a huge smile. “Now I have got to go, because I've had to pee since she walked in.”

* * *

“Today was a pretty good day, huh?”

Villanelle bounces up and down on the bed. Eve sits on the far edge, unamused.

“Come on. I got my cash. You got some clothes.” Villanelle crawls over and pulls at Eve’s beloved old pajamas, a T-shirt printed with the name of some bar and threadbare sweatpants. “We didn’t get caught. I didn’t have to kill anyone. Pretty good.”

“Things are not _good_.”

“But now we have a plan.”

“We have a suggestion from a schoolteacher who has no idea what she’s ended up in the middle of.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not a good suggestion.”

“But she shouldn’t be making it.” Eve puts her head in her hands. “Jesus Christ, whatever we do now, we’ve got another innocent person in the middle. She lied to British Intelligence today. If they catch her, she’s getting thrown in prison at a minumum, and that’s best case scenario. Every minute we stay here is another minute we’re putting her at risk.”

“Hold on. You are worried about Gemma now?” Villanelle can’t stop herself from letting out a laugh.

“I’m tired of innocent people dying all around me,” Eve spits. “She might be annoyingly perky and painfully naive but she didn’t sign up for this. She took a job at a school, not MI5, not the Twelve. And she wouldn’t be in any danger right now if not for you pulling her in.”

“Oh,” Villanelle says. “So we are back to _this_.”

“We never left. Did you think I’d forget because we got interrupted?”

“It’s Gemma, it’s Niko, it’s Dasha, it’s Carolyn, it’s everyone – can’t you be angry about something else? Why does it have to be _me!_ ”

“Because apparently, you can’t stop trying to destroy everything else in my life.” Eve leans in close. “You will burn down every last thing I have if it means that you’re all I have left.”

Villanelle thinks about burning. Burning the orphanage. Burning down her house with her family inside.

Eve doesn’t know about any of that. Villanelle wants to scream at Eve for an irresponsible use of metaphor. Eve doesn’t know what it’s really like for everything to burn. Instead, Villanelle bites her tongue raw.

“You can’t even say anything to defend yourself,” Eve laughs. “My soulmate, ladies and gents.”

Villanelle takes a very small breath so that it comes out like an approximation of calm when she asks, “What do you want me to say?”

“Not that.” Eve turns and gets off the bed. “Anything but that.”

Eve slams the door behind her.

Villanelle considers chasing her. She could follow Eve downstairs, reignite the screaming match – she’d put decent odds on herself to win this one.

But _fuck_ , she’s tired. She ran up and down England, today. She wants a hot shower and a bed to herself. Eve can sulk if she wants to sulk. Knowing Eve, the winds will change soon.

* * *

Villanelle doesn’t care for sleeping alone.

Never mind that she’s done it for most of the nights of her life. She knows she is capable. However, it’s simply rude that after four nights, four blissful, fight-free nights, she was allowed to grow accustomed to the way her body fit nestled with Eve’s.

The first night they were here, she reveled in the size of the guest bed, but now, spreading out on the queen-size mattress is distracting rather than appealing. Distracting enough to keep Villanelle awake when she really wants some deep, dreamless sleep.

That, and the crying.

At first Villanelle wasn’t sure what the sound was. She thought perhaps Pompom was just outside her door choking on a hairball. But it’s a bit too squeaky to be the cat, and then she realizes – it’s Gemma.

This won’t do.

Out one door, in another. Though it’s dark, Gemma clearly hears Villanelle’s entrance, because the sobs pause. She’s listening.

“It’s me,” Villanelle says.

“Oh.” A sniff. “Do you need something?”

“I heard you through the wall.” Villanelle takes a step closer. Her eyes are slowly adjusting to the light, taking in the shape of Gemma as she props herself up, seated in bed. She’s in a loose nightgown, with the covers pulled up to her chest. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Gemma says. “Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m not worried. Your sniffling was keeping me awake.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll try to keep it down.” Gemma’s voice slides up in pitch towards the end of her sentence, giving away that she will probably be unsuccessful.

Villanelle goes sits on the bed. She picks up a box of tissues from the nightstand and offers it to Gemma.

“Th-thank you,” Gemma takes a tissue, then a few more, because this small gesture of affection makes her break down even more. “I’m sorry. I really am. I’ve been trying so hard to keep it together, because it doesn’t seem fair to fall apart this way in front of Eve.”

Villanelle places a reassuring hand on Gemma’s knee, over the blanket. “You are sad about…”

“Talking to that woman – pretending Niko was alive, pretending everything was fine, for a few minutes, I almost fooled myself. Now, I’ve remembered all over again.” Gemma pauses to blow her nose. “It’s so stupid. I feel like I’ve lost him. But he wasn’t mine to begin with.”

Villanelle doesn’t know what to say. Besides, Gemma is saying plenty.

“Please,” Gemma says. “It hurts, but I need to know. Were you there when he died?”

“You mean, did I kill him?” Villanelle lets out a low chuckle. “No. Dasha tried to frame me, though.”

“Who’s Dasha?”

“Don’t worry about her. She’s dead, too.”

“What did she do to him?”

“I wasn’t there. But Eve was. She saw it happen right before her eyes.”

“Well, I can’t ask her.”

“You’re right about that.”

“Did she tell it to you?”

“Not much, but I inferred. Eve is weird like that. She’ll blab for hours about most things, but she shuts right up when it comes to seeing Niko stabbed with a pitchfork.”

That’s enough to set Gemma wailing again. She buries her face in a new wad of tissues.

Villanelle sighs. It shouldn’t be her job to deliver this story, nor to comfort Gemma through it. But if she wants to sleep tonight, the only path forward leads through Gemma’s grief.

“Shh, it’s alright. It was over quickly.” Villanelle elects to comfort Gemma, despite having never tried a pitchfork through the neck before. But it would have to go fast, wouldn’t it? By blood loss alone… Unless Dasha had spectacularly bad aim and managed to miss all major arteries _and_ the windpipe.

“So he didn’t suffer?”

“Not at all,” Villanelle says sweetly. “You know, stabbing through the neck is one of the most painless ways to go.”

“Thank goodness for small mercies.”

Villanelle is utterly unprepared for Gemma to throw herself into Villanelle’s shoulder, crying still harder than before.

“Sorry I’m so bloody emotional,” Gemma wails, into the arm of Villanelle’s pajamas. “It’s the hormones.”

“Maybe sleep will help,” Villanelle tries, optimistically.

“I’d love that.” Gemma pulls away again, and Villanelle resists the urge to immediately take a new tissue to wipe at the wet patch Gemma left on her sleeve. “But to top off this delightful situation, I can’t sleep at all lately. Awful back pain keeps me awake.”

Villanelle squints in the dark, and for the first time, she notices dark circles underneath Gemma’s eyes. In fact, she notes, this is the first time she’s seen Gemma without makeup on. She looks older. Hardier. Less “painfully naive”.

Gemma’s looking back at Villanelle. Is she noticing something new in the dark, too? “You nearly killed me.” Gemma says quietly, but firmly. The tremor has gone out of her voice. “And you nearly killed Eve, too. You shot her.”

“What did Eve tell you?” Villanelle demands. “I bet she left out that she nearly killed me first.”

Villanelle sits up and lifts her shirt, exposing her torso. Then, realizing Gemma may not be able to see clearly in the dark, she grabs Gemma’s hand and places it over the tiny raised line on her skin.

“There are two sides to every story,” Villanelle says.

Gemma remains transfixed for a moment. Then, she suddenly withdraws her hand. “Eve wasn’t totally wrong. It’s your fault I’m like this. It’s your fault I can’t sleep.” She smacks Villanelle on the arm.

“I wanted to help you out!”

“You wanted _Eve_.”

“Yeah.” Villanelle looks down at her lap. There’s no point in denying further.

Several days too late, she considers that maybe Eve had a point about not sharing with Gemma that they are soulmates, right away.

Half a minute or so goes by before Gemma asks quietly, “Were you and Eve having an affair?”

“What?”

“Back then. When she was with Niko, really with him. When you met me.”

“Not in so many words.”

“Did you have intercourse?”

Villanelle thinks of bed in Paris. She thinks of the best laid plans, torn apart by a small but sharp knife. She realizes Gemma is waiting for an answer. “Eve _wishes_.”

“Oh.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“If Eve was already, _you know_ , with someone else. I might not feel so bad about…” Gemma gestures to her stomach.

“They weren’t happy together.”

“I suppose not. Not without her soulmate.”

“Yes.” A warmth blooms in Villanelle’s chest at that. Hearing someone else say it is even better than knowing it herself. She retracts her momentary regret of sharing it with Gemma.

“That must be nice,” Gemma sighs.

She’s going to cry again, isn’t she.

“It’s uncommon, isn’t it?” Villanelle says, innocently. “Most people haven’t even met someone who has one.”

“Two of my best mates in university, and also a coworker at my last school,” Gemma rattles off immediately. “Plus my parents, of course. And they are _so_ happy. To this day. They tell the story of how they figured it out, and they’ve had so many happy times…” Gemma’s voice creeps up in pitch again. “but it’s not for everyone, I suppose.”

“Hey. It doesn’t make everything easy. Look at me and Eve.” Villanelle lets out a bitter chuckle. Then, inspiration. “You know a lot about soulmates.”

Gemma avoids Villanelle’s gaze.“Not particularly.”

“We found the bookmarks.”

That makes her shrink sheepishly. “I’ve done a bit of reading, that’s all.” Then, slowly, she looks back at Villanelle. “Why do you ask?”

“Is it supposed to be this hard?” As soon as the question is out of her mouth, Villanelle regrets asking. Because saying it out loud made it real.

“How do you mean?”

“It seems like, once you find that person and you realize it. You’re supposed to be happy together.”

“It’s just a small fight,” Gemma says. “I’m sure you and Eve will work it out.”

“Probably…”

“And you said yourself, you’ve been through hard times before.”

“True,” Villanelle admits.

What Gemma says makes sense. But Villanelle can’t shake the feeling that something is off.

Though it’s difficult to tell in the dark, Gemma’s tears seem to have dried. Villanelle tosses the pile of tissues off the side of the bed. She could take her chances now, but she has a funny feeling the squeaky sobs will start up again as soon as she returns to the guest room.

Villanelle swings her legs back onto the bed, then climbs under the covers next to Gemma.

“What are you doing!?” Gemma cries, as Villanelle nudges her, prodding her to lie down on her side.

“Shhh.” Villanelle starts rubbing Gemma’s lower back, underneath the covers. “Does this help?”

“Very much so, yes,” Gemma sighs, almost a moan. “But–”

“Close your eyes. I am going to watch you until you fall asleep.”

“That’s terrifying.”

“Exactly. I dare you to toss or turn while I watch you.” Gemma still looks worried, so Villanelle adds, “It will help. I promise.”

Reluctantly, Gemma lowers her head onto her pillow and closes her eyes. Villanelle watches her as her breathing slows, faithfully massaging her back all the while (she doesn’t do things halfway). That training she had to sit through before the kill where she was disguised as a massage therapist is finally coming in handy. She feels Gemma’s muscles relax in real-time under her fingers.

“Villanelle.” The word is so quiet, barely even a whisper, yet it’s still strange to hear it in Gemma’s voice.

“What is it?”

“Did I make a complete arse of myself earlier, suggesting that?”

“No,” Villanelle whispers. “It’s a good idea.”

Gemma’s back moves up and down with her breath. Slower and slower. Almost gone, but not quite. Villanelle won’t leave until the job is done.

As she watches the increasingly minute movements, it’s almost hypnotic. She starts to drift off…

A ghostly image comes back to her… This body… A stairwell…

* * *

Villanelle wakes easily. It’s hard to say if it was a tiny sound, a gentle movement, or the pale dawn light that stirred her from sleep. She takes a deep breath in before opening her eyes. Then nuzzles closer to Eve.

Something doesn’t smell right.

She opens her eyes. The hair she is nuzzled into is not thick, curly brown, but silky, straight bronze. The bed she is in is not the guest bed. And the person she is wrapped around is not Eve.

Villanelle wrinkles her nose. She pulls at a lock of reddish hair, to check if it’s real. It’s indeed tangible. Not a dream. Then, she recalls how she ended up here. How she watched Gemma fall asleep.

Staying the night was not part of the plan.

Villanelle carefully extricates her limbs, but as she climbs out from under the covers, it tugs on the blanket enough to stir Gemma. Gemma lets out a squeak of surprise as she consciously takes in the situation.

She stares at Villanelle. Villanelle stares back.

“Eve is probably still asleep,” Villanelle says.

Gemma nods.

Villanelle decides it isn’t necessary to add: _Don’t breathe a word of this to her_.

Instead, she says, “How did you sleep?”

“Really excellent,” Gemma murmurs. “Thank you.” She sits up, then scoots over to the other edge of the bed, leaning over towards the nightstand. Then, she stops, and looks at Villanelle. “Can you go, please? So I can get dressed?”

“Right,” Villanelle says. As she reaches the door, she takes one more glance back. Gemma is rummaging in the top drawer of the nightstand. She pulls out a notebook, then looks up at Villanelle. Not looks. _Glares_. Few people have the courage to glare at Villanelle, and most only do because they don’t know yet what she is capable of. It’s enough to send her out, retreating to the guest room.

Something is off, for sure.

On the bright side, maybe dying will help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and there were only two beds (and a couch)!!!! but they ended up in one by accident!!
> 
> lemme know what you think
> 
> or follow me on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xo


	6. Chapter 6

The past three days have been a tiresome carousel as Eve and Villanelle recycle the same argument, round and round and round. A new adjective here, a harsher insult to land a point there, but their core positions never budge. Villanelle wholeheartedly believes that she and Eve must fake their own deaths, ever since Gemma suggested it, and won’t accept any criticism of than plan, nor offer any alternative. Not even when Eve points out extremely reasonable and pertinent concerns about how that plan might not work at all, and might put them in more danger.

In order for them to fake their deaths, and MI6 or the Twelve to see it, they have to expose themselves. Secondly, most methods that they might attempt to make their deaths look real carry certain physical risks. Finally, if they execute a performance successfully so that their pursuers can witness it, they have to hope it will be taken at face value and that they won’t be chased anyway, or the entire effort is for nothing.

Add all those problems together, and Eve can’t get behind this scheme which, no offense to Gemma, is clearly a dream from someone who doesn’t understand the severity of the situation. Eve can’t fathom why Villanelle is so attached to it. She better than anyone should realize why it won’t work – technically, she died many years ago, but the Twelve don’t care about that.

Last night’s rotation ended with Villanelle tapping out and declaring she’d leave the country.

The suggestion came at the end of an argument. Villanelle chased Eve around the living room, berating her to acquiesce to the plan.

“How would we even do it?” Eve demanded.

“We go back to the bridge,” Villanelle said, slowly and deliberately. “We take hands. We go over the edge.”

Eve laughed, which was not the correct response. “Come on. That’s the cheesiest thing I’ve ever heard. Besides, how would we make sure we don’t actually drown?”

“What do you suggest?”

“I _don’t_ suggest.” Eve says. “But if I had to, I’d pick something vaguely credible. Easy to fake. A car accident.”

“That’s so boring. No one would believe it for a second.”

“My point exactly,” Eve says. “Even the best version of this plan is stupid as hell.”

“You are impossible.”

“So are you.”

That was around when they noticed Gemma watching from the steps. It was unclear how long she’d been standing there, or how much she’d heard. But did it really matter? They’d had the same argument in different pieces for days.

So Villanelle left for Somewhere In Central Europe. For practical reasons: she has a contact, whose exact location she won’t reveal any more specifically than that, who can get her fake passports, for a hefty fee. Whether they fake their deaths or simply run, Eve and Villanelle will need documents, so, much as Eve wants to argue or accuse Villanelle of fleeing out of cowardice, she knows it’s a smart call.

She didn’t protest when Villanelle declared she would make the trip alone. Villanelle said “You will slow me down,” and Eve said, “fine”. She likes to piss Villanelle off by not arguing when Villanelle is clearly baiting her to.

Eve is rather pleased to have a break from her, at first. Until she comprehends the reality of Villanelle’s absence.

* * *

There’s no denying it’s awkward.

They quickly learn to steer clear of each other. Eve purposefully waits until Gemma leaves for work to get up and start her own day, and likewise waits until Gemma retreats upstairs after dinner to come down and pick at the leftovers.

They successfully avoid significant conversation with each other for three days. Though Eve frequently hears conversation from across the house that is conducted half in the Queen’s English and half in meows.

Finally, on Saturday, Gemma mentions to Eve that she is making a trip to Tesco. She asks if Eve would like anything.

“Yes,” Eve says, her mouth working faster than her brain. “I want to come.”

This is how Eve ends up wrapped in a winter coat, with her hair bundled into a beanie, sunglasses covering her face, riding in the passenger seat of Gemma’s car once again.

It’s necessary, really. Even after she pulled some boxes from the storage unit, it’s not quite the full wardrobe she hoped for. In spite of the sweaters, dresses, and many turtlenecks she recovered, Eve finds herself in an unfortunate dearth of socks and underwear. Sure, she could’ve stayed home and asked Gemma to get some, but it’s more mortifying to tell Gemma her underwear size and instruct her to pick the cheapest option that hasn’t got anything weird written on it, than to go along and grab the damn things herself.

This is how Eve ends up bundled in her beanie, sunglasses, and coat, awkwardly trailing Gemma down the fluorescent-lit aisles of Tesco.

Gemma’s quieter than normal; none of her usual nervous babbling. Maybe the past three days have acclimated her to the discomfort of being around Eve so she’s not actively anxious anymore, just plain uncomfortable.

Eve feels a strange prickle. Something awfully like guilt. That’s ridiculous – why should she feel guilty? For punishing Gemma so much for one mistake, that she’s terrified to speak to Eve? For taking refuge in Gemma’s home while she’s a fugitive from both criminal and government forces, putting her danger from both parties without her consent? _Guilt._ Ridiculous.

Still, it prickles. Until Eve makes an effort. She clears her throat. “It’s a good thing Villanelle isn’t here,” Eve tries, as they round a corner. “She would never allow us in a place this _cheap_.”

“Must be nice, to be able to be picky,” Gemma sighs. “On a teacher’s salary, Tesco is my best friend.”

“On any salary, it’s good sense,” Eve counters. She stops short, picks up a value-pack of standard white underwear. “Why pay more than a pound a pair of undies?”

“Exactly.” Gemma smiles. “Maybe you should get some for Villanelle, too.”

Eve laughs, and throws a second pack into the cart. “It’ll be worth it just for the look on her face.”

As they amble through the grocery section, doing a standard food stock-up for three adults and a cat, conversation starts to flow. Nothing heavy; mostly gossip over which brands of sweets are disgusting or a good recipe Eve found one time for no-bake chocolate cream pie (Gemma is a little disappointed at the thought of not _getting to_ bake something).

One could almost describe their rapport as _friendly_. Not like best friends, nothing deep. But they chat like two people who kind of know each other – a husband’s coworker, a colleague’s wife – might chat upon running into each other at the supermarket.

Until one salesperson who is trying entirely too hard ruins it all.

“Congratulations!” shrieks the woman whose name-tag proudly introduces her as _HI! I’M PEG!_ She calls out to them from several meters away, but it’s clear she’s got Gemma locked in her sights. “Every mummy-to-be would do well to check out the sale we have on all infant care.”

Gemma blushes. “Thank you, but it’s fine.”

“I’ve never seen prices this low. You don’t want to miss out.”

“I don’t…”

Eve cuts in. “Thanks, Peg. We’ll go check it out.” She flashes a wide smile rivaling Peg’s own, until she walks off to prey on some other customer. Then, Eve starts heading towards the baby aisle. “Well?”

Gemma taps on the handle of the cart nervously. “I don’t have to. Not now.”

“Don’t get shy on my behalf,” Eve says.

“I don’t need anything.”

“Yes you do,” Eve says. “I’ve seen the house. You don’t have much baby stuff yet. Or any. Whatsoever. ”

“I wasn’t sure if I’d… need it.” Gemma starts admiring the pattern in the linoleum floor tiles.

“No judgment, but you’re a few months past that window,” Eve says.

“That’s not what I meant,” Gemma says quickly. “I considered that, but I… couldn’t.”

“Then what?”

“I thought, maybe…”

“Come on. Gemma. Whatever you’re about to say, it’s not exactly going to ruin my opinion of you.”

By now, Gemma’s redder than the Tesco logo on all the products around them. “I thought… I might give it to him.”

Eve tries not to vocally react, though it makes sense why Gemma’s embarrassed. It’s a childish presumption, that if given as a gift back to Niko, that might erase the sin that created the child. The whole fantasy plays out Gemma’s face, darkened by the shame of knowing it never would’ve worked.

She could taunt Gemma about the stupidity of this idea; it’s so tantalizing to twist the knife further.

 _Guilt_. Fuck.

“At these prices… you better buy some damn nappies.” Eve leads the way down the aisle and grabs a case of diapers. She plops it into Gemma’s cart without waiting for further approval.

Gemma doesn’t blink. She grabs another package, stacks it on top. “They don’t go off. So it only makes sense to stock up now.”

Finally, something Eve and Gemma can agree on.

Two carts later, Eve helps steer their haul towards checkout, while Gemma avoids the gaze of another one of Peg’s victims, staring agape at the empty cavern they left on the diaper shelf.

* * *

Eve can no longer say Gemma has no baby supplies once they unload the ten cases of diapers, plus assorted other items that Tesco offered at unbelievable prices.

At Gemma’s direction, Eve loads the boxes into a closet. “Are you sure you don’t want them somewhere more accessible?” Eve says.

“Like where?”

“I dunno,” Eve says. “Where’s the baby gonna sleep?”

Gemma’s mouth opens, but no sound comes out. Clearly, something has short-circuited.

“Oh my god.” She stares down at the case of diapers in her hand. “I’m having a child.”

“It took you until now to realize that?”

“I knew I would have a baby. I didn’t realize I would be having a child.” Panic creeps into Gemma’s voice. “A small human being will appear in this house and I have to take care of it. A _baby_.” She melts to the floor, clutching the diapers like a life preserver.

Eve squats down to address the hyperventilating mess in front of her. “I thought you like kids? You’re a teacher.”

“There’s a reason I teach high school. They’re young adults. I like developing minds. You can’t have a conversation with a baby!”

“You have a conversation with the cat every day.”

“He’s precocious!”

“You know,” Eve says. “Niko really wanted a kid. We talked about it a lot. Early on. He pretended his continual questioning was to make sure I was really certain. He never actually pressured me. But I knew he wanted it. He’d be thrilled about this.”

Gemma shakes her head. “I’m sure this isn’t how he wanted it.”

“I’m trying to find a silver lining here. Would you let me?”

Eve stands up, then stretches out her hand. Gemma takes it, and Eve helps her up. The touch is almost shocking, and Eve thinks perhaps it’s the first time she ever touched Gemma – except for that far-too-friendly hug Gemma gave her the very first time they met.

“Silver lining,” Gemma repeats, trying to believe it.

“Another way I was never the wife he wanted,” Eve says. “Another thing you can give him instead.”

Eve meant it to come out kindly. She really did.

But old grudges die hard.

* * *

When she moved back to the UK as a graduate student, Eve swore she’d never buy into the obsession with tea. Hot leaf juice. Nothing special.

But twenty years and many situations almost as awkward as this one have led her, like any good Brit, to believe in the healing powers of tea.

It begins innocuously enough. Gemma pours boiling water into both mugs. She waits about fifteen seconds. She pulls out her tea bag.

“Are you kidding?” Eve snaps. “Less than a minute, you might as well drink plain water.”

Gemma freezes, eyes wide and shining like she might cry.

Eve’s mouth falls open. “I don’t know what I… I’m sorry. Niko always said that.”

Gemma swallows. Smiles. “I understand. He could be rather persistent when he felt things should be done a certain way. Only yesterday, I was cleaning the chalkboard at the end of classes, and I heard his voice, clear as day. ‘Horizontal swipes, never vertical. The only way to clean it properly.’”

And as Gemma lowers her voice into a gruff approximation of Niko’s demeanor, in a rather competent impression, Eve realizes. Gemma _knew_ Niko. Not in the way Eve did, but a version of him belonged to her, too – a different version, a work version, one that Eve hardly saw, if ever.

He’s gone forever now, but still there in her memories, and in the crinkle of her smile while she rattles off more stories.

“He always gave me an earful about the importance of cleaning erasers thoroughly and often,” Gemma says. “So they’d do their job, so they’d last. I couldn’t be bothered, not more than once a year, anyway, and so he’d come to my classroom and make a big show of doing it for me, you know, pulling at the old guilt strings. Really, I was just glad to see him take care of it, while I sat and relaxed.” Gemma stops. Her face scrunches up. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said any of that.”

Eve’s confused, until a drop wells out of her eyes and tracks down her cheek. She quickly wipes it away. “Thank you.”

Gemma starts blinking; she’s getting misty too, then laughs it off. “It’s silly. He wasn’t _my_ husband…”

“It still hurts.” A memory surfaces, deep from the recesses of Eve’s mind. “Talk to him out loud.”

“What?”

“It helps. Apparently. Kenny said that once. God, Kenny.” Eve looks up at the ceiling, as if that’s how she can address him. “I miss you too, weird smelly boy.”

“Who’s Kenny?”

“Someone else who should still be alive.” Eve laughs bitterly. “Caring about people is the sickest trap on earth. You lose them all, eventually.”

“It is frightening,” Gemma murmurs. “Ever since my grandmother passed, I have nightmares about losing my parents. That I’d wake up one day and they’d be gone, and I’d be all alone.”

“Been there.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Gemma says. “Are they both…?”

“My dad passed about twenty years ago. My mom’s a couple hours away, up north. But I lost ‘my parents’ when I was six years old. When they divorced. Honestly, all I remember was them fighting. There weren’t many big happy family times for me to say goodbye to. But I still cried all night after my mom moved out.”

“She’s your mother. That’s important.”

“And people can be important even if they’re not related to you.” Eve notes they’ve circled back to the sore spot from before. Maybe it’s time to plow through it. “Niko was my husband, but he wasn’t…”

Gemma nods. “I…” She shuts her mouth. “Never mind.”

“Go on.”

“I shouldn’t say. It’s awful.”

“You’ve said enough today. Spit it out.”

Gemma sighs. “I remember the day I met Niko. He was new to St. Theobald’s, and he walked in with a box full of his things, and I was trying to hang a poster in my room. He walked in from the hallway, and came to help me reach the top corner, even though he had his own things to carry.”

“Sounds like Niko.”

“He was so kind, and strong…” Gemma falters, but continues after Eve throws her a sharp look. “I thought, or, I suppose I hoped, that the might be my soulmate. I saw the ring on his finger, but I hoped anyway. You read those stories in the tabloids - happy married couple finds out their soulmates are not each other, tense breakup, but everyone’s better off in the end… real fantasy fuel.”

Eve’s insides go cold. Is this going where she thinks it’s going? If Niko and Gemma were… It would be so right in a way, wouldn’t it? Awful for Gemma, of course. But that might be okay, with Eve.

“Naturally I was disappointed when all I dreamt of that night was that Mum was sick but there was a horrible traffic jam as I was trying to get to see her in hospital.”

Eve lets out a breath. Apparently she didn’t really want it to be true, after all.

“But I have to confess,” Gemma continues. “Despite the absolute absence of evidence, I held onto the fantasy for a long time.”

“Til he died.”

“Actually, um, until I met you.”

Eve’s taken aback.

Gemma keeps babbling, “I mean, all I heard was talk, and you were never around… it was rather easy to make up… a less than flattering portrait of Niko’s wife. But once I met you, I couldn’t believe my own bullshit anymore. It was completely, utterly, one-hundred-percent clear to me why Niko loved you so.”

“From that one conversation? About astronauts or something?”

Gemma lights up. “You remember?”

“Of course I remember,” Eve snaps. Then softens. “It was the only one I ever went to. He was always asking me. Four years he worked at that school, and I went _once_.”

Gemma says nothing, for once. Which is the most helpful thing she’s ever said to Eve.

For all Eve’s admonishing to Gemma, she forgot to take out her own tea bag. It’s terribly strong, and getting cold. But fitting to the situation at hand.

“It’s nice to talk,” Eve says, finally.

“Of course. Anytime.”

“Can’t exactly talk grief with Villanelle. Same run-around every time: ‘You didn’t even like him. What’s the big deal?’”

“Perhaps she’s jealous.”

“It was cute before he was buried in the ground. Not so much now.” Eve spins her mug around in circles. “She doesn’t get grief.”

“Not in the same way you do. But she probably feels it.”

Eve can’t help but let out a scoff at that, though she can’t fault Gemma for not knowing Villanelle as well as she does. “What loss is she gonna mourn? Her nice apartment in Paris?”

“Her mother?”

This simple suggestion is like a rock thrown through Eve’s window onto the world. It could be an innocuous guess, Gemma supposing that everyone has a mother and Villanelle may well have lost hers, but the way she says it doesn’t sound like a shot in the dark.

“What did she tell you?” Eve asks.

“She didn’t say much really…” Realizing she’s stepped into sensitive territory, Gemma backpedals like a pro.

Eve isn’t about to let go that easily. Villanelle has never given Eve the tiniest scrap about her family – nor anything about her life prior to working for the Twelve, other than what Eve learned herself while investigating her in the first place. Yet apparently, she’s had intimate chats with Gemma about a dead mother. “Tell me.”

“You should ask her yourself.”

“Hard to talk about anything with her lately.”

Gemma knows. She has heard the fights. “Perhaps it’s none of my business…” she begins.

“It is.”

“But maybe talking it out to someone else might help?” Gemma looks up, hopeful. “So you and Villanelle are split on this idea. What is your issue with it?”

“I don’t think it’ll work,” Eve says. “No offense. It’s a nice thought. But no one will buy it. If we both turn up dead from suicide or accident at the same time, there’s no way the Twelve accept that without looking further. It’s too unbelievable.”

“Get them to suspend their disbelief then.”

“What?”

“Willing suspension of disbelief. It’s a term in literature, in fiction. Aristotle spoke of it; Coleridge codified it. Whenever we listen to a story, we intentionally turn off the logical parts of our brain that say ‘this isn’t real’ for the sake of entertainment, or catharsis. The more emotionally satisfying the outcome, the less inclined we are to question it.”

“That’s it.”

“It is?” Gemma starts, apparently surprised anything from her rambling got through.

“There’s one ending to this story that makes sense. I know what we have to do.”

* * *

Dinner together, with little conversation. Sitting in the living room at the same time, Gemma reading a book while Eve watches the news with the volume turned down, and Pompom walks in circles, patrolling the house. It’s still awkward, but less than before.

Baby steps.

In any case, their tentative peace ripples at the doorbell, which seldom brings good news these days. Eve’s halfway up the stairs to hide when Gemma opens the door, and says, “Villanelle!”

She comes in the house, and starts shedding bits of disguise with each step into the living room. _Whiff_ – a wig lands on the couch. _Clack_ – glasses hit the floor. She looks exhausted.

 _Welcome back_ , is one thing Eve considers saying. _Are you okay?_ Is another. She settles on: “How did it go?”

“Papers will be ready in six to eight weeks,” Villanelle says. “That is his time frame, not mine. So I don’t want to hear any more whining about how long it takes.” Her eyes flit back and forth between Gemma and Eve. Noting their relative proximity. The lack of biting sarcasm. “You two seem to be getting along.”

“We had a bit of a breakthrough,” Gemma explains. “For your plan. Eve, do you want to–”

“You’re gonna kill me,” Eve blurts.

“What?”

“We put on a show.” Eve crosses, closer to Villanelle. “The big finale everyone is expecting. You’ll kill me where they all can see. While running from the scene, you’ll get in an accident or something – we can figure out that part later. It makes sense.” She takes a breath. Gives Villanelle a chance to respond.

“It does.”

“We can do this. We can die,” Eve says, though Villanelle is hardly as excited as Eve expected her to be. “So… um, I’m in, if you are.”

Villanelle nods once. Then heads upstairs.

* * *

Eve feels compelled to knock before entering. It’s odd, the guest room doesn’t belong to Villanelle any more than it belongs to Eve, but between their fighting and Villanelle’s trip, it’s been over a week since they shared the room together, so, knocking feels appropriate.

After twenty seconds with no response, she enters anyway. Villanelle is lying on her side, with a thin, worn book propped open, though she tucks it away as soon as Eve comes in.

“Hi,” Eve says. Suddenly she gets why Villanelle defaults to a simple greeting in uncomfortable situations.

“Hi,” Villanelle replies, unenthusiastically.

Eve gets on the bed, and without announcement, Villanelle gets under the covers with her, and puts her arms around her. Pressed into Eve’s back. No negotiation. It’s obvious they both need this.

 _I missed you_ , is one thing Eve considers saying, but she vetoes it because it’s not entirely true. _I missed your body_ , is another, which is more accurate but sounds crass. She settles on: “You seem off.”

“I’m not.”

“You don’t like the plan? You don’t think it makes sense?”

“It does make sense.”

“Okay.”

But it’s not.

Eve flips over, so they’re face to face. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m trying not to say anything else that will make you mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at you.”

“You tend to be, anytime I say something.”

“I talk too much.”

Villanelle finally focuses at that. Eve bites back that little flame of satisfaction she gets, anytime she catches Villanelle off guard. “I want to hear you talk,” Eve says.

“About what?”

“Anything.”

“Don’t do this, Eve. You don’t mean _anything_.” Villanelle plays with a stray curl of Eve’s, running the end between her fingers.

“About your family.”

As expected, there’s the roadblock.

“What happened?” Eve says. She doesn’t say: _I know you talked to Gemma. Why didn’t you talk to me?_ Anger and guilt aren’t the right tools for this task. They are chainsaws, jackhammers. Right now she needs something finer.

“If I tell you,” Villanelle says, barely more than a whisper. “Will you listen?”

It’s Eve’s turn to feel guilty, now. The weariness behind that question is like a bullet to the back. The fact that it feels surprising to her because Eve doesn’t even remember how many times she has ‘not listened’ to Villanelle because, well, she wasn’t listening; but the exhaustion in Villanelle’s voice makes it plain that it has been too many times.

“I will,” Eve promises.

And Villanelle tells.

And Eve listens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew boy! it's nice to sit and talk.
> 
> let me know what you think in the comments
> 
> or come chat with me on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xo


	7. Chapter 7

“Congratulations,” Dr. Singh greets Gemma with melodramatic flair. “You are entering the eighth month. How far you’ve come! You should be proud.”

Gemma nods meekly, once again wishing these little paper gowns she’s forced into afforded a bit more coverage. She may as well be naked, at this point. 

Dr. Singh slides closer in her swivel chair and chats rapidly while she gets through the necessary business. “This month, you may experience a range of new symptoms, including any or all of the following: varicose veins, hemorrhoids, mood swings, fatigue, leg cramps, shortness of breath, frequent urination, possible bladder leakage, stress, or anxiety. You may find yourself feeling hungry all the time, which means you’ll want to eat smaller, more frequent meals.” She looks up at Gemma, expecting a response.

“Um, yes,” Gemma says. “That all makes sense.”

“Aside from the physical stress your body is under, the emotional stress can also peak at this time.” Dr. Singh writes something down on her chart, then changes her gloves. “This is where a lot of mothers start to feel a mix of emotions about the coming baby.” 

“I suppose that’s natural.” Gemma thinks of last week, when she melted into a puddle in front of the widow of the baby’s father. _Totally natural._

“Do you have any questions about what to get before the baby arrives, or, are you already prepared?”

Gemma thinks of the stack of nappies in the hall closet, probably enough to last until potty training, with no nursery to put them in. “No questions, no.”

Dr. Singh gives a restrained smile. “I offer this purely as a resource, and you’re free to say no. But I know preparing to raise a child alone can be especially stressful. If you’d like, I can connect you with some single mothering groups. They offer tips, and support… solidarity, you know.”

“Thank you very much, Dr. Singh,” Gemma replies. “I’ll let you know if I should ever need them.”

To her credit, Dr. Singh doesn’t press, she merely moves on to the next item in her checklist. “Any other worries you’d like to talk about?”

“I don’t think so.”

“How about sex drive?”

“Pardon?”

“There’s no wrong answer here. I only want to create a space for you to ask any questions you may have. Many women tend to be sensitive - ‘Am I too horny? Not horny enough?’ I’m here to reassure you that it’s normal to be anywhere on the spectrum from never wanting to be touched, to your sexual peak. So?”

Gemma’s face grows warm. “It fluctuates.”

“That’s normal. Completely normal. Safe to deal with however you see fit.” Dr. Singh writes something down on her clipboard rather vigorously, and Gemma wondered if there was, in fact, a wrong answer to that question. “No other concerns?”

“No.” Gemma says. “Only that my feet have been killing me.”

“Yes, it’s very normal to see swelling, and even occasional leg cramps. Put your feet up when you can. And stick to flats.”

“I’m not sure I own any.”

Dr. Singh laughs, until she realizes Gemma isn’t kidding. “Seriously. Lose the heels; it will change your life. I’ll see you in two weeks.”

* * * 

Gemma swings by H&M on the way home and buys a couple pairs of plain flats in defeat, sits through dinner as a silent witness to Eve and Villanelle’s argument over how best to attract the Twelve’s attention when the time comes to perform their deaths, and goes to bed at nine-thirty, because odds are she won’t be able to get to sleep for two hours anyhow.

Sure enough, as soon as the light goes out, the little thing below rouses itself and decides it’s high time for a dance party. The kicks are no longer the little flutters of weeks past, they’re substantial. They’re _annoying_.

Gemma lifts her head, looking down at her stomach. “Hey.”

Kick.

“Yes, I’m talking to you,” Gemma whispers. “You’d best stop it. It’s bad for both of us if I don’t get any sleep.”

Kick.

“I quit smoking,” she adds. “Gave up Wine Wednesdays. I didn’t complain during the first seven months of nausea, aches, and stretch marks that will never go away. Now you’ve taken away my precious heels too, and on top of it all, you won’t stop kicking like you’re trying out for bloody Manchester United.”

Kick, kick.

“I have an actual murderer staying here, and she’s better behaved than you. What does it say that even with the assassin, and the woman with the undying grudge against me, who alternate between screaming matches or loud sex every night, _YOU_ are the worst tenant I have to deal with!” Gemma has to pause for a moment to inhale deeply.

_Shortness of breath._

“Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”

No kick.

“That’s what I thought.”

* * * 

Following the fetus’s football tryout, the next day is one of the longest Gemma’s ever lived.

While teaching Homer’s _Odyssey_ , her journey across the classroom feels like an odyssey of her own. Every step aches. Every class period feels like an eternity with how badly she has to pee by each break.

She considers that it may be time to start her allotted maternity leave. However, tempting as it is to not have to be on her feet teaching for seven hours, the thought of remaining home all day, every day, with no reprieve from Eve and Villanelle and their endless radio show of love/hate/whatever the wheel spins, is more painful than swollen feet could ever be.

Towards the end of her lunch break, Gemma returns from her requisite trip to the loo to find a visitor waiting in her classroom.

Villanelle. In disguise. A familiar one. The wig is missing, but between the headband, lensless glasses, and even a necklace made from some macaroni that must’ve been buried at the back of the cabinet, Gemma recognizes the character.

“What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see you.” Villanelle crosses one leg over the other, perched on the edge of Gemma’s desk.

Gemma freezes. Villanelle hasn’t spoken to her much since returning from her trip. Really, since before that. Since the morning of their little _mistake_. That’s how Gemma decided to think of it. Just a casual mix-up. Best not thought of at all. Because the only bit more frightening than what Eve might do if she found out is how strangely pleasant the _mistake_ was. 

Yet here Villanelle is. Visiting Gemma at work. “You couldn’t wait three hours?”

“I wanted to see you outside the house.”

“Why are you dressed like that?”

Villanelle pouts. “I thought you’d like it.” Then she swivels her head around, surveying the classroom. “Reading anything good in class?”

“ _The Odyssey_.”

“Boring,” Villanelle pronounces. “I read something much more interesting lately. May I share?”

Then, she reaches into the tote bag slung over her shoulder, and pulls out a book that, like the disguise, is all too familiar. Gemma’s dream journal.

“‘February 4th’,” Villanelle pronounces in her English accent. Gemma’s blood turns to ice. “‘Last night was Teachers’ Night, and either this dream was spectacular deja vu, or I’m not quite sure where it began. Niko was there, and I met his wife. That part was normal. In the stairwell, this new substitute teacher named Kim (pretty if a little oddly dressed) asked for a cig. Then she started asking me about Niko, whether I fancy him, and giving some rather forward advice, but here’s where it begins to fall apart: somehow it ended with us kissing. Her lips were like nothing I ever–’” Villanelle frowns at the unfinished sentence, then asks in her normal voice, “‘Like nothing you ever’ what?”

Gemma wishes the floor would open and swallow her up. Or that Villanelle would kill her this instant. That would be preferable to the embarrassement. “You shouldn’t read things that aren’t yours.”

“Tell me, Gemma, since you are the expert.” Villanelle hops off the edge of the desk, and takes a step towards Gemma. “Can a person have two soulmates?”

“What?”

“Because I know what happens next.”

Gemma’s heartbeat picks up. “You do?” 

“I kiss you, and then…”

“Eve,” Gemma breathes.

“Don’t worry about her now,” Villanelle says. “You know what this means.”

Gemma shakes her head. “It can’t be.”

“Gemma.” Villanelle stares her down, both frightening and arresting. “What is my name?”

“Villanelle.”

“No.”

Gemma tries again. “Kim?”

“Remember,” Villanelle croons. “You knew it before. You called me by it…”

“What are you talking about?”

“Think!” In a flash, Villanelle has her arms around Gemma, one around her back, the other, pulling something from her bag. A knife. The blade flashes in the fluorescent light.

“Oksana.” Gemma gasps as soon as it escapes her mouth. She doesn’t know why she knows the name, but she knows it’s right.

“I knew it.” Villanelle melts into a haggard smile, closes the switchblade, takes Gemma’s face, and kisses her again.

No, not _again_ … this is the first time. The first time for real. But it feels exactly like Gemma remembers. She closes her eyes, and she’s back in that stairwell, drunk off her arse, making out with a complete stranger.

Fingers twist in her hair, pulling her closer, and Gemma’s whole body impulsively angles closer to Villanelle’s, allowing her to deepen the kiss even more. A tongue presses into her mouth, hot and heavy, and the edges of Gemma’s vision go red.

She might’ve continued forever if she didn’t need to come up for air – her compressed lungs not allowing as much stamina as she once had. But once Gemma frees herself, she’s greeted not with the warm tones of her fantasy, but the harsh, fluorescent-lit reality. Classroom, not stairwell. Pregnant, not drunk. Murderer, not stranger.

Villanelle tries to kiss her again, but Gemma ducks out of the way. “You need to go.”

“We aren’t done.”

“The children are coming back any minute.”

Sure enough, the rumble of footsteps and the mumble of conversation swell in the hallway – the students returning from lunch.

Gemma musters everything inside her to stare Villanelle down (or rather, _up_ ), trying very hard not to reveal her terror on her face.

“We are going to talk later.” Villanelle slings her bag over her shoulder, and ducks out the door right as a stream of rowdy children comes pouring back into the classroom.

Gemma feels like she may faint after that.

 _Fatigue_.

* * *

The three hours remaining in the school day pass more like three years. All at once, Gemma feels like she may fall asleep on her feet, fall over from how badly her feet hurt, or combust into flames from the kiss that still lingers on her lips, radiating heat throughout her body.

By muscle memory, she manages to teach the passage of Odysseus escaping Calypso’s island, try and fail to convince her students Classical text isn’t totally boring and unrelatable, mark a few papers, and drive home with minimal incident. Dragging herself towards the door, the only thing keeping Gemma upright is the promise of a moment to relax in her bedroom, only a few steps away.

As soon as she crosses the threshold, Villanelle falls upon her like a hyena on a wildebeest. “Welcome home. How was your afternoon?”

“Long.” Gemma stomps inside and kicks off her shoes, bringing a few seconds of relief to her aching feet. 

“Had any thoughts about what we discussed?”

Gemma can’t believe Villanelle is this single-minded. She nods slightly towards the stairs: _your actual soulmate is up there._ Villanelle gives a half-shrug: _she probably can’t hear._

“No,” Gemma says loudly. She doesn’t doubt Eve’s hearing so much. “I haven’t had any thoughts because my legs are cramping so bad I can’t think straight at all.”

“That’s a shame.”

“You know what would be really helpful, is if you run to the store and get some aspirin. I’ve run out and I can’t walk another step today.”

Villanelle furrows her brow for a minute. “Of course,” she says. “Anything for you. Gemma.”

She slips around Gemma in the narrow space of the foyer, brushing against her back. Her touch on Gemma’s shoulder is like a cattle brand, and Gemma bites her tongue to keep from vocalizing. Thankfully, mercifully, she slips out the door without another word. Crisis averted.

Ascending the steps to the first floor is like summiting Everest, but Gemma manages, one step at a time, often pausing to regroup. Pompom runs up and down the steps several times while she makes her way, taunting her. 

Finally, she reaches the sanctuary of her bedroom. Time to rest. Or… Deal with the problem that’s a bit more pressing than exhaustion.

She goes to the bottom drawer of her nightstand. Bending down is a bit of a chore, at her current size, but she manages to retrieve her trusty purple vibrator. It’s a real workhouse that has served her well for years, though the last time she used it must’ve been months ago. Gemma has hardly masturbated since the first trimester. She knows she _could have_ , but her body feels a little bit weird about touching herself ever since she started to show. 

If ever there was a time to get past that mental block, it’s now. 

Ever since Villanelle’s little visit, she’s been unable to think of anything but. That visit – did it really happen? It feels more like a dream that what Villanelle read from Gemma’s journal. The softness of Villanelle’s lips, that she felt again today, that felt just the same, no – better than she remembered. She curses herself for not taking the chance to find out if the rest of Villanelle feels like she remembers–

She flops on the bed, props up pillows to lean back on, and sticks a hand under her dress. Her finger’s on the switch for the vibrator, when…

Knocking at the door.

“Come in.” Gemma forces her voice to a pleasant sing-song tone, and shoves the vibrator under the pillow. Hopefully this will be quick.

The door creaks open, and Eve slips inside. “Hey.”

“Hi.”

Eve saunters about the room with no apparent purpose, like she’s browsing a shop. She peers in the mirror on Gemma’s vanity, then points at the music box. Shoots a sheepish look at Gemma.

“He fixed it,” Gemma explains. “Right after you left.” 

“Probably apologized for my behavior too, huh.” 

“Profusely.”

Eve lets out a bashful chuckle. “Yep. Anyways. I came over here because, well… I wanted to thank you. For the talk the other day.”

“Of course. Anytime. Don’t mention it.”

Gemma waits for Eve to go. But she reamains, shifting her weight back and forth.

“Do you need something?” Gemma asks, finally.

Eve needs no more encouragement to launch into a speech. “Lately I can’t stop thinking about Bill, because… even though it was a long time ago, it’s a little bit uncomfortable considering… Wait, you don’t know him. Bill, he was my colleague, and shit… he was my best friend in this world. Villanelle killed him. So how can I still be upset about it while being with her?”

“Eve,” Gemma says, stretching her cheeks into a a pointed smile. “I’d love to talk that out with you, but right now isn’t the best time.”

Eve’s absolutely affronted, like a toddler told “no” for the first time. “What happened to ‘of course’, ‘anything you need’? What happened to making up for what you’ve done?”

“I’ve been working my arse off for weeks making up for it, actually, but that’s besides the point. I’m a fucking human being and I need a bloody minute to myself sometimes!”

Regret washes over Gemma as soon as the retort escapes her mouth, but it’s too late to take it back. Eve’s annoyance deepens into anger. The changes are tiny on their own – a minuscule tightening of the brows, a microscopic narrowing of the eyes, an imperceptible tension in her jaw, but combined they indicate that the predator has Gemma in her sights now.

And something deep inside Gemma, something down low, twinges in pleasure.

Eve stares her down, like she did the last time, the first time she was in Gemma’s bedroom. _“You don’t want to get dragged in?”_ she had said. Gemma nearly laughs at the memory, given she’s far past the point of no return now. Consider herself _dragged_. Eve’s furious. And Gemma’s hungry.

Eve’s been mad this whole time, of course, but not at Gemma, not truly. Mad at Niko for cheating, mad at Villanelle for causing it, mad at the circumstances which forced her to continue to exist near Gemma and thus acknowledge her existence. But not once has she given Gemma enough consideration to focus her anger in the right place.

And doesn’t Gemma deserve that?

“This is a change of tune,” Eve scoffs. “You’re talking like someone who doesn’t feel guilty at all.”

Gemma swallows. “I don’t.”

Eve lets out a bitter laugh as she stalks closer. One Gemma recognizes. She has learned some things about Eve, in the past few weeks.

And she’s learning quite a bit about herself with each passing second.

“I told you before I wouldn’t have touched him. That was a lie.” A strange fiery confidence fills Gemma’s veins as she speaks, and she can’t stop now, not that she wants to. “Truth is, if he would’ve given in, I would’ve done it, and I would’ve liked it. I would’ve taken him home, up to my bed, and I would’ve had him. I thought after I met you I’d feel bad and stop wanting it; I thought I wouldn’t want him anymore realizing it would hurt a real person. But I only wanted it _more_. I wanted to take him away from _you_. I wanted to take him and make him feel amazing, and make him come, and make him forget all about you. Because then I’d have stolen one thing from the woman who has everything. Then I would win.”

The weight of Eve Polastri’s full attention falls upon her like the sky upon Atlas’s shoulders. It’s crushing, but Gemma’s delighted to find she can bear it. She loves it. Deep inside, the very core of her aches with wanting like she’s never felt in years, maybe _ever_. She understands, for the first time, why Eve and Villanelle are so content to tear each other apart, over and over again.

“That’s the thing, though,” Eve says, stalking closer. “You couldn’t take him. Not on your own.”

“Maybe so.” Gemma surprises herself yet again, as her words come out without a squeak or tremor. “What about Villanelle?”

“What about her?”

“She’s interested.”

“Interested in…”

“Me.”

“Sure. Yeah,” Eve sneers.

“Go on and laugh if you want. That won’t change it.”

Eve’s fierce gaze falters for the first time. She lifts her head, chuckles at the ceiling. “She’s fucking with you. Obviously.”

“I don’t think she is.”

“You don’t know her.”

Instead of the anxiety that usually envelops her when Eve is upset, excitement courses through Gemma’s veins instead. She has no inkling of what Eve may do to her, but she longs to find out. 

Eve’s glittering brown eyes are stunning. They focus on Gemma’s mouth, then dip down to her chest. Before Gemma can really be sure of that, Eve’s gaze flicks up again, so she’s staring Gemma in the eyes.

Lips, tits, eyes. If Gemma didn’t know better, she’d think…

The sound of the deadbolt and the door opening shatters the moment. 

Gemma parts her lips, preparing, what – an apology? A plea for Eve to stay? A reassurance that she was lying about Villanelle? But Eve slips out of the room without another word.

Gemma remains suspended in her spot, unable to figure out her next action. “Aspirin delivery,” calls Villanelle in a booming voice. “In the kitchen, your highness.”

She has no choice but to go. All these demands, no release; Gemma is a bomb with a lit fuse, and she may explode any moment.

_Stress._

* * * 

It isn’t until after dinner that Gemma finally gets another moment to herself. By now, she’s far too exhausted to think of doing anything but falling into bed. 

But there are too many questions running through her head. She fumbles blindly for her laptop, perched on the nightstand, and hauls it into her lap. She lies back, propping the computer on her stomach, and reaches up to type into Google:

_“Multiple soulmates”_

No results, save for an ad for a reality TV special about a pair of identical twins that were both soulmates with another pair of twins. (Gemma bookmarks it for later).

_“Can one woman have two soulmates at once”_

Nothing comes up. Save for some porn with slightly overlapping keywords except swapping soulmates for cocks.

The entire internet, the sum of human knowledge, provides no evidence to back up this possibility.

Villanelle could very well be manipulating her. Like Eve suggested. It wouldn’t be the first time. Much as Gemma feels pain, shame, and violation remembering that night they first met, when she thought she was confiding in a friend, and really she was being used as a pawn… This doesn’t feel the same. Though, that night didn’t feel like manipulation either, not until all was revealed.

But the present situation differs in one important way: that last lie was to help Villanelle get Eve. What would Villanelle possibly get out of lying about this? Saying they’re _soulmates_? Sex with Gemma, sure, but why would she want that when she has her real soulmate at her beck and call? (Gemma knows their sex life is alive and well; the walls are thin).

Maybe Eve is right. Maybe Gemma doesn’t know Villanelle, and that’s the problem. Maybe she doesn’t know either of them. Maybe it was the biggest mistake of her life to let these two women she barely knew except to know they were distinctly dangerous stay in her home.

But if that’s the case.

Why’d she meet them on the same night? Why’d they end up here together?

Why does she continue to have these fleetingly close experiences with each of them? Fleetingly intimate? Fleetingly true? What is the point of that, if they’re only destined to move on in a few weeks, if she’ll never see them again?

There’s a grander plan at play. There has to be.

Because the alternative is that Gemma’s subconscious is working overtime, desperately grasping for any alternative way to make sense of this situation rather than the sad truth. That a dangerous pair of soulmates are, for the second time, using her as pawn in their deadly game. That Gemma means nothing to anyone on this earth, except as a pair of tits, as an object to elicit jealousy between _real_ lovers.

_Anxiety._

Gemma has always had an active imagination. _Daydreamer._ That’s what her Grandmother would say, tousling her hair as she’d walk by. _You’ve got a brain for stories. Write them down in books, where they belong_.

Not in real life.

It wasn’t long ago that Gemma clung to her intricately constructed belief that Niko was her soulmate. Any psychologist would call her present theory a classic case of repeating patterns. Coping behavior, perhaps. A mental refuge from loneliness. With a dose of fear of mortality thrown in, which was probably compounded by her near-death experience (inextricably tied to Villanelle) and her current physical indisposition (undeniably associated with Niko, and by extension Eve). It’s no wonder she’s found a way to project a fantasy onto both of them. _Well done, Daydreamer_. 

She slams her laptop shut and plugs it in, putting it back on her nightstand, accidentally knocking her dog-eared copy of _The Odyssey_ to the floor. She remembers this afternoon, hearing her own voice like it was someone else speaking, going on and on about Calypso. Calypso, the beautiful nymph imprisoned in paradise. Calypso, who happily took in the stray adventurer Odysseus and said he could rest with her as long as he needed. Calypso, who fell in love with the wayward adventurer, even though he only yearned to return to his wife. Calypso, who put everything she had into enticing him to stay. Calypso, who will be alone on her island long after Odysseus leaves, long after he dies. Such is her curse.

Per usual, Gemma’s rumination is disturbed by noise from the next room. _Squeak squeak_ , right on schedule. If only she had known she might end up hosting a couple that is determined to fuck at every opportunity, whether they were on good terms or bad, she might’ve thought to soundproof the guest room.

She considers selecting a white noise playlist from her phone, which is good enough for the squeaks, but it won’t help once the moaning starts. And the dirty talk. Eve and Villanelle don’t use inside voices.

Right on cue, their activities reach a fever pitch, with the rising noise coming through clear as day.

“Fuck.” Villanelle’s voice. Eve is taking charge. Villanelle doesn’t seem to like it.

“ _Fuck!_ ” Or, on second thought, Villanelle _really_ likes it.

What a horrible, beautiful thing, to be so consumed in each other’s presence, they don’t give a hoot that Gemma can hear every bit. It only reinforces how much she’s not a part of it. 

Nothing she can do about the noise, so Gemma lays her head on the pillow. But there’s something hard underneath. She turns on the lamp, and lifts the pillow. 

Her vibrator.

The constant interruptions, before. The squeaking and thumping coming through the wall, now. She’s not going to get to sleep soon, anyway…

Gemma turns off the lamp. She doesn’t want to witness herself.

She pulls up the blanket and makes herself comfortable (much as she can be, these days). She slips a hand under the covers. She closes her eyes. She touches herself, and _poof_ – she’s back to that night. That refuge of her dreams. The soundtrack is perfect, and her dreamscape forms in an instant. No baby bump. No soulmates. No adultery. Just three women pleasuring each other in a stairwell.

The rhythm speeds up, faster and faster, then slows, suddenly. Eve has a command: “Act like you’re enjoying yourself.”

Gemma starts. Did she imagine that? Recalling the line from her dream? Or did she hear it through the wall? She has no time to wonder, because Villanelle’s moans crescendo, she’s reaching her peak, and so help her, Gemma is too. She takes a chance, turning the vibrator on _high_ while the moans afford her some cover, and comes harder than she has in ages.

As Gemma’s pulse slowly returns from normal, the noise from the next room dies down.

No squeaks.

No kicks.

Quiet.

Gemma, alone on her island.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is possibly my favorite :)
> 
> let me know what you think in the comments, or come say hello on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xoxo


	8. Chapter 8

Generally speaking, Villanelle’s not a planner. She prefers to improvise. Yet, she has to admit, there’s a certain satisfaction in a plan coming together.

Timing remains the limiting factor as she and Eve fit new pieces into the puzzle of how they’ll convince the Twelve and MI6 that they are dead. Villanelle’s instinct is to focus on the performance itself – it’s the most fun part – but Eve is relentless in nailing down the practical details first. _When_ and _where_ must precede _how_. Villanelle proudly secures a good location: her old flat in London, where she stayed while working with MI6. They’ll easily find her there again, and she manages to (anonymously) secure a lease starting next month. They have to wait a few more weeks for their passports, anyway, so there’s no reason to rush the other elements.

The biggest piece still missing is a doctor. They need someone qualified in the medical field to pay off in order to legally pronounce them dead. At least Eve. Oksana Astankova has been legally dead for years, so all she really needs is for her former employers to see her go down and buy it. Eve Polastri needs to be erased from legal personhood to escape MI6’s grasp.

Eve claims to know someone at the morgue. But when pressed, it turns out that “someone” is really a friend of Carolyn’s. It doesn’t do well to ask a friend of the very person they’re trying to escape from, to help them escape. Eve is smart enough to know this, but still sulks for a whole day after Villanelle points it out. Eve’s still a bit touchy since the entire fake death thing was technically Gemma’s idea. Eve likes to claim credit for things.

Villanelle’s not too bothered by this. Let Eve worry about the doctor problem; they have plenty of time to work it out anyway. She has another problem that grows bigger by the day. Literally and metaphorically.

It all started when she fell asleep that night in Gemma’s room. Because waking up in Gemma’s room made her find the notebook. She didn’t read much into it at first. But Gemma seemed so protective of that little notebook that it itched at Villanelle’s mind. She snuck into the bedroom the next day to flip through it. Most of the entries were predictably inane, but then the pages flipped open to a particular spot, where it looked like a page was torn out.

After that, there was no going back. While Villanelle traveled to Hungary to meet her contact, she was consumed with thoughts of what it meant. Well, on the surface, the meaning was clear: if Gemma had that dream, on the night she met Villanelle, and Villanelle had the same one – which she didn’t read into before, because she’s had plenty of sex dreams about attractive women in her life – there’s one obvious conclusion.

Like a switch flipped, Villanelle’s entire perception of Gemma changed. On her return journey, she obsessed over each small gesture of kindness Gemma had shown to her ever since she arrived. Before, Villanelle brushed it off, since she believes anyone that _nice_ is an idiot, or is trying to get something out of her. But now, it’s all lit up in the new bright light of the word _soulmate_. Gemma really is that good. And it doesn’t make Villanelle want to barf.

She walked back in the door from her trip, and her heart filled upon Gemma welcoming her back, almost the same as it did upon seeing Eve again. More than just a physically attractive (if a little annoying) woman that she saw her as before, now Gemma is beautiful. Fucking _glowing_. It’s true what they say about pregnant women. Why didn’t Villanelle see it before? It’s perfect. It’s meant to be.

The only problem is, Gemma doesn’t see it that way.

* * *

Gemma’s very pregnant. Managing her various symptoms is a balancing act harder than any Villanelle’s had to maintain as an assassin. Gemma’s feet hurt from standing and teaching all day, so she only wants to rest with her legs elevated when she comes home; however too much sedentary time makes her back pain worse, so she also has to force a modicum of physical exercise in, which circles back to hurting her feet.

The result is Villanelle has to be the exercise police. Every night, Villanelle reminds Gemma as she plops on the couch and kicks her feet up that her doctor recommended at least thirty minutes of activity a day.

“Not tonight,” Gemma moans. “Had to substitute for Mr. Lockwood, so I lost my free period. I stood for seven hours straight.”

“Aren’t you allowed to start your leave by now?” Villanelle says, grabbing Gemma’s arms and hauling her up from the couch.

Gemma steadies herself on her feet, then waves Villanelle off. “I’m not due ’til next month.”

With no recent sightings of Ivan or Ilya or any personnel from the Twelve, Eve and Villanelle have become more relaxed in venturing out of the house, though they do keep a low profile or wear disguises, in case Carolyn or anyone else who knows them should pop up. In keeping with this, Villanelle has decided that it’s appropriate to take a nightly walk, by cover of dark, with a hood pulled up over her face. This happens to work out very well with Gemma also needing a nightly walk. Eve doesn't participate; she cherishes the time of having the house to herself to watch bad TV or sing in the shower or whatever it is Eve does when she's alone.

Gemma’s perched on the steps now, pulling on the fresh pair of chunky white trainers she got last week when walking even in other flats became unbearable for her. She grimaces at the shoes.

“Ready to go?” Villanelle asks, pacing back and forth in the foyer.

“Almost,” Gemma grunts. She bends forward. Fumbles with her laces. Her face goes red. Clearly she’s having some issues with flexibility and sightline, thanks to her stomach getting in the way.

“Do you want–”

“I’ve got it,” Gemma snaps.

“Because I can help.”

“No! I’m a grown woman, I’m capable of tying my own shoelaces!” She struggles for another few seconds before tears well up.

“Gemma?”

“I can’t tie my own shoelaces.”

Villanelle sighs and drops to her knees. She ties the laces quickly, double-knots. “There you go.”

Gemma swallows. Blinks her eyes clear. Villanelle senses she’d try to walk off on her own, if she could. But she needs Villanelle to help her out.

Once they’re out of the house, she speaks her mind.

“It’s okay to need help. Sometimes you need another person. For the little things.”

“Have you and Eve found a doctor yet, to help you with the plan?”

Seems Gemma is still determined to pretend their discussion in the classroom never happened.

Unfortunately for her, Villanelle doesn’t give up easily. “Not yet. But you know who helps each other out a lot,” she says. “soulmates.”

“Stop it.” Gemma power-walks, trying to outpace Villanelle, or at least her version of it, which is really more of a waddle that Villanelle can easily match at a casual pace.

“Stop what?”

“Stop saying that.”

“What? Soulmates?”

“Yes.”

“But we are.”

“We are not,” Gemma says, getting a little out of breath, now. “And even if we were, you already have a soulmate. Eve. I wouldn’t step in the middle of that.”

“You didn’t care so much before,” Villanelle snorts.

She’s totally unprepared for the open-palm _smack_ across her face. Villanelle comes to a dead stop and clutches her stinging cheek. “Excuse you.”

Gemma appears even more surprised at her own action than Villanelle is. She stares down at her own palm for a moment, horrified.

 _God,_ she’s cute.

“I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.” Gemma starts walking again, turning back towards the house. “Mostly.”

“Why are you resisting?” Villanelle matches pace with Gemma, slightly ahead of her, walking backwards to face her. “You know it’s true.”

“No, I don’t. It’s not possible. It has to be a mistake, a coincidence.”

“You sound like everyone in the first half of a movie, ignoring the obvious. We had the same dream. The night we met.”

“We didn’t.”

“You wrote it down! You can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Mine was not _that_ kind of dream.”

“But it was,” Villanelle repeats. Is Gemma gaslighting her?

“Tell me about yours.”

“You and I… we kissed.”

“And?” Gemma pauses.

Villanelle scratches her head. “And some fingering.” Does Gemma want a full beat-by-beat description?

“Well, I had a different dream.” Gemma starts walking again, faster than before, like a weight has been lifted off her.

“You expect me to believe it’s a coincidence, you had a dream that same night that started with kissing? The night we met?”

“Mine was definitely not a soulmate dream.”

“Why?”

“It just _wasn’t_.”

Villanelle wants to ask the English teacher to elaborate on that point in a couple paragraphs, but they’ve reached the house again. Gemma marches inside without hesitation, knowing that ends the conversation as soon as they get back into earshot of Eve.

She watches as Gemma leans against the wall and pries the trainers off her feet without even attempting to untie the laces. She watches while Gemma slowly, agonizingly, makes her way up the stairs.

Too late, she notices Eve watching _her_.

* * *

It’s easy to scream at each other. It’s easy to fight.

It’s so much harder when Eve says nothing.

It would be easy to let her go. Let her sulk. But Villanelle can’t let that happen.

She dashes up the stairs, right on Eve’s heels as she tries to sneak away to the bedroom.

“Hey.”

Eve says nothing. Villanelle follows her inside. Hesitates, then closes the door. “Don’t walk away without talking to me.”

“What are you doing?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re up to something.”

“You are imagining things.” Villanelle can’t tell the truth. Certainly not until she’s figured everything out.

“God, I’m an idiot.” Instead of yelling at Villanelle, Eve paces across the room, and slumps against the wall, running fingers through her hair. “I don’t know why I expect any different.”

Villanelle doesn’t really know what Eve’s on about, so she says, “You’re not an idiot.”

“I am.” Eve shakes her head slightly and lets out a puff of air. “Time and time again, I sit and watch while you…” She thinks better of whatever she was about to say. Then tries again. “Everything we’ve been through means nothing to you?”

“That’s not true.” Once again, Villanelle falls to her knees. Unlike Gemma, her other soulmate needs a different kind of assistance. She crawls over to Eve’s feet. Grasps her legs. Eve tenses up at the touch, but she doesn’t fight, doesn’t yell. For Eve, that’s a welcome warm as a summer’s day.

“You mean everything,” Villanelle murmurs. She places a kiss on Eve’s left leg, then her right. Grasps the curve of her calves, and her thighs. She begins working her way up, worshipping every inch of Eve. “You _are_ everything.”

Eve remains silent, but some of the tension goes out of her. Villanelle pulls herself up onto her knees, puts her hands on Eve’s hips. Kisses up her stomach, her arms. Her skin is like silk. Her scent is like pure oxygen.

Finally, Villanelle draws herself up to her feet. She looks Eve in the eyes. Open, not angry. But holding something back. Villanelle’s fingers twitch involuntarily at her side. _Don’t think about it_ –

“I love you.”

Fear coils inside Villanelle like a spring, compressed by the memory of what happened the last time she said those words. Fear that Eve might tell her again, _“no”_. Might tell her, _“You don’t know what that is.”_

Fingers twitch again. Itching to do something to fill the dead air. But Villanelle holds back. She waits, though every millisecond is painful.

Eve moves, finally. Her hand goes to Villanelle’s face, lifting her up by the chin. “I love you, too.” Eyes flutter shut for a few seconds. “I hate it, but I love you too.”

The kiss that follows is like coming home. Villanelle rests her forehead against Eve’s and lets out an exhale. “Let’s never forget what we just said, okay?”

“I’ll take it to my grave,” Eve says. “It’ll be a pleasure to die together.”

Villanelle pulls away. Eve notices. Her eyebrows scrunch up. She pulls at Villanelle’s wrist. Her way of asking what’s wrong. Villanelle didn’t fully realize what was bothering her, until now.

Her voice is low as she asks the question she’s asked many times before. More afraid of the answer than ever. “Do you really think I would kill you? Still.”

“I don’t know anymore,” Eve says. “But we all have to die someday. And I can’t really think of a way I’d rather go.”

She yanks Villanelle by the hand, and they tumble onto the bed.

As their bodies hit the cushion of the mattress, Eve grunts, “I can’t wait to get out of here.”

“Where do you want to go? After we die.”

“Don’t think we have a choice.” Eve raises her eyebrows and points at the floor, then kisses Villanelle again.

“You know what I mean,” Villanelle breathes into her. “We should probably clear out of Europe. This continent is crawling with the Twelve. But I don’t think they’ve made headway into the Americas.”

“Perfect. Let’s go to the States, then.”

“Eve,” Villanelle scoffs. “No.”

“I don’t want to go someplace I don’t speak the language.”

“You’d have to rely on me.” Villanelle runs a finger along Eve’s cheek, eliciting a small laugh.

“Exactly. Plus the US is big, There’s a fuck-ton of people, and I know how to blend in there. We could keep moving. For extra security.”

Villanelle wrinkles her nose. “I don’t want to go anywhere without nationalized healthcare.”

“We won’t even be able to use universal healthcare if we’re ‘dead’.”

“It’s the principle of the thing.”

“What about Canada?”

“Canada.” Villanelle considers the pros and cons. Sorta cold. Cozy. Not unlike Alaska. Villanelle has never been there, but from what she’s heard, it sounds like England and the US had a baby but France also jizzed on it. “It could work.”

* * *

They’re lying in the afterglow of one of their softer romps when the door creaks. Villanelle turns over, instantly alert at the sound, but no one’s there. Until she looks down. Pompom squeezed through the gap in the door, and now he’s approaching the bed, flicking his tail back and forth.

Eve grunts and turns over, trying to see what Villanelle’s looking at. “Just the cat,” Villanelle murmurs.

Pompom meows. Villanelle chuckles and rolls over, pulling Eve closer to her, taking a deep breath in, smelling her shampoo.

Pompom meows again. Louder.

“What is it?” Villanelle glares at the cat.

Meow. Meow. _Meowwwwwwwwww._

“I think it wants something.”

“No, really, Eve? You think so?” Villanelle rolls her eyes and climbs out of bed. Pompom flicks his tail again almost smugly, and sneaks back out the door. With a yawn, Villanelle follows.

The cat leads her downstairs, and Villanelle thinks, _So help me, if that cat interrupted my one nice moment with Eve just because it’s hungry, instead of going to get Gemma…_

But when Pompom leads her into the kitchen, it’s clear he wasn’t looking for his food bowl to be filled.

Pompom silently rushes to the side of Gemma, leaning against a cabinet. The kettle sits on the stove; she must’ve come down to make tea. But now she’s on the floor, clutching her stomach, clearly in pain.

“What’s wrong?” Villanelle gets down onto the floor, touches Gemma on the arm.

“Nothing,” Gemma says, but it’s not very convincing, through gritted teeth. Pompom mews again. _Don’t lie._

“What’s going on?” Eve has appeared now, furrowing her brow at the odd little crowd gathered on the floor.

“Go back to whatever you were doing, don’t worry about me,” Gemma says. “Just a bit uncomfortable–” The last syllable stretches into a long, almost melodic note of pain. Villanelle clutches Gemma’s hand, helping her ride through it.

Then, she notices Eve glaring, and drops it.

Meanwhile, Gemma’s breathing comes in short, uneven gasps.

Villanelle leans forward, anxious. “Is the baby coming?”

“It’s far too early for that!”

“Maybe premature labor…”

“Relax,” Eve cuts in. “It’s probably Braxton-Hicks contractions.”

Both Villanelle and Gemma turn to stare at Eve.

“What? I’ve never had a kid but I’ve seen enough friends and coworkers through it to know the basics. Plus, I watch TV. Anyways, Braxton-Hicks are uncomfortable, but harmless. You need to wait it out, that’s all.”

“But what if it is not?” Villanelle says. “What if it’s something more serious? She should go see somebody.”

“It’s a waste of time. They’ll tell her to go home.”

“Watching TV doesn’t make you a doctor, Eve.”

“Please, don’t fight,” Gemma pleads, though it’s cut off by another cry of pain as her face twists into a grimace.

“That’s it. I am taking you to the doctor, whether you like it or not.” Villanelle takes Gemma by both hands and helps her to her feet. “Get your coat. I will drive.”

As Villanelle ushers Gemma out the door, Eve appears behind her, also grabbing her coat.

“You don’t have to come,” Villanelle says.

“I’m not letting you go alone. What if something happens?”

It’s not clear if Eve means, _What if someone sees you?_ Or, _What if something happens between the two of you?_

Villanelle doesn’t ask.

* * *

The waiting room is full of babies. Most are two-dimensional: on pamphlets promising info about lactation, teething, colic, and diaper rash; in photographs on the wall, sitting in flowerpots. A couple flesh-and-blood babies sit in the arms of other adults in the waiting room. One is quiet; one cries. Villanelle wonders if the tired father has ever contemplated putting his child in the trash bin.

Villanelle flips through one of the pamphlets. It’s not very interesting. She glances at Eve, who’s also got a pamphlet, but rather than reading it, she’s busy folding it into dozens of tiny creases.

“Do you think I’d be a good mother?”

Eve looks up, processing the question, then bursts out laughing loud enough that several other people in the waiting room begin to stare.

“Stop. That’s mean.”

“I wasn’t ready for that question,” Eve manages as she catches her breath, and wipes a tear from her eye. “Why do you ask?”

“I dunno.” Villanelle glances at her lap. “Babies are cute.”

“Sure,” Eve agrees. “But babies grow into toddlers, which are awful. Then they’re kids, which are a handful. Teenagers are a nightmare. And can you imagine being a parent to an adult human? The thought makes me wanna keel over here and now.”

“You don’t have to _ruin_ everything,” Villanelle mumbles.

“It’s the truth. And something more people should remember before they romanticize a little plus sign on a piss-covered stick. You’re not having a _baby,_ you’re having a whole lifetime of being a parent.”

“ _You_ are a nightmare.”

“Babies _are_ cute, though.” Eve unfolds her pamphlet and starts smoothing it out against her thigh.

Then, Gemma emerges from the office, smiling weakly. Villanelle leaps from her seat, but Gemma answers the question before it can be asked. “Braxton-Hicks.”

“Told you,” Eve says without looking up from her pamphlet. “I knew we came here for nothing.”

“Well, not for nothing,” Gemma says quietly. One hand on her lower back, she makes her way over to the chair next to Eve, and beckons Villanelle to sit as well, then addresses them in a low voice. “I told Dr. Singh I have a niece who is interested in the medical profession, asked if she might connect me with any young colleagues who might agree to an informational interview.” From her coat pocket, she pulls stack of business cards, fanning them out. It must be at least a dozen. “Reckon one of these might take a bribe?”

Villanelle chances a look at Eve. Even her thick layer of grumpiness cracks slightly to reveal relief.

This can work.

* * *

Eve falls asleep quickly, as usual, but Villanelle lies awake. Her mind is racing. She couldn’t sleep if she wanted to.

A gentle nudge to make sure Eve is soundly in the depths of REM sleep, then Villanelle slips out of bed. Light steps like she’s on the job, she sneaks out into the hall.

Nothing else is working, so all that’s left is to return to what worked before. She cracks open the door to Gemma’s bedroom.

The whispered response is immediate. As Villanelle predicted, Gemma is still awake, lying in the dark. “What are you doing here?”

“I want to talk.”

“I want to sleep.”

“I can help with that, too.” Villanelle climbs onto the bed, and lifts the covers, but Gemma slaps her hand away.

“Whatever you think is going on here, you’re mistaken.”

“You don’t want this?” Villanelle reaches out and rubs Gemma’s shoulder. “Tell me you didn’t enjoy that night we spent together, and I’ll go.”

“You’re supposed to be in bed with Eve.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“This doesn’t make sense,” Gemma says. “You and I. We don’t _go_.”

“You are trying so hard to ignore the truth.” Villanelle shakes her head. “You knew my name. You called me Oksana. How do you explain that?”

“I must’ve heard Eve say it.”

“This is real and you know it. I was going to _kill_ you, you know? When I make up my mind to kill someone, they are already dead. But I couldn’t with you.”

“Maybe you’re nicer than you think you are.”

“Ha.” Villanelle snorts.

But Gemma presses on. “You act like this big scary assassin on top of the world, since you’ve hung around here for weeks, I’ve gotten to know you. You’re not scary; you’re _scared_. So scared that people will leave you, you kill them first. Like your mother.”

A twinge in Villanelle’s torso. Maybe it’s not as bad as a knife, but Gemma’s just as capable of a blow with words. An ancient instinct inside her tries to rouse her muscles. _Kill her. Smother her with the pillow. Snap her neck. At least give her a good punch. Make her hurt. Make her shut up. Whatever it takes._ But it’s only an echo, too weak to move Villanelle’s limbs to action.

Before she can figure out how she wants to respond, Gemma speaks again. “I’m sorry. That was too much.”

More apology than Eve’s ever given her.

“This is real. You need to stop pretending.”

“You need to leave.”

Villanelle grabs her shoulder. “Gemma–”

“No.” Gemma shoves her away. “I can’t handle any more of this. You’ve tortured me enough already, and I don’t even know what you get out of it, but I’m begging, please, just leave me alone.”

Villanelle turns away. Doesn’t look at her face again. Doesn’t want to see it.

She stumbles back out into the darkness of the hallway, reeling.

She expected Eve to be stubborn when they first discussed the topic of soulmates, yet Gemma’s somehow so much more stubborn than Eve. The woman who’s obsessed with soulmates won’t believe it, but Villanelle knows it’s true. It _has_ to be. As soon as she read that scrap in Gemma’s journal, she felt as certain as she did the moment she met Eve.

It feels unfair, that the universe should force another soulmate upon her, only to reject her. Villanelle was fine with one. How is she supposed to go on knowing, _knowing_ , this connection with Gemma, and ignoring it?

Villanelle’s skilled in ignoring some facts, it’s true. She quite successfully ignores the fact that it doesn’t matter if Gemma resists or not, because Eve will surely blow up everything between them if she finds out. She also ignores the fact that both these women loved, fucked, _fought over_ a fudgey Polish man, and in comparison, act like loving Villanelle is the hardest task in the world. She ignores it, because if she allowed herself to fully think about it, it may be enough to fully realize the violent instincts that pulled at her a minute ago. She could go from two soulmates to zero in a minute flat, blood on her hands forever.

And prove Gemma right in the process.

Ignorance is bliss. As Villanelle silently slips back into her own bedroom, she envies Eve – asleep and totally unaware of the predicament Villanelle is in. It hurts because a part of her, a small part, desperately wants to confide in Eve, because Villanelle doesn’t know what to fucking do. She wonders if Eve felt this way when she was married to Niko. But that wasn’t the same. Niko wasn’t a soulmate. So it’s better that Eve stays in the dark.

As Villanelle climbs back into bed, she finds that Eve has rolled over in her sleep, and is facing her. That’s alright. They can spoon the other way.

But as she gets face to face with Eve, she finds that Eve’s eyes are open.

She is awake.

The walls are thin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woo baby things are getting complicated i hope I can stick this landing
> 
> btw here's a sexy little [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2BbBTQgHQimvgCEuJTkKPs) for this fic if you're interested!
> 
> let me know your thoughts in the comments or come chat on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xo


	9. Chapter 9

This is the first time Eve has seen Villanelle look _guilty,_ which is a pretty fucking bad sign.

Knowing how easy it is to hear conversation through the walls, Eve keeps to a whisper, which is easily heard by Villanelle only inches away on the next pillow.

“What was that?”

Villanelle fumbles for words. Also a first.

“Were you fucking with her?”

“No,” Villanelle whispers.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“That’s the truth,” Villanelle insists. “I wasn’t messing with her.”

“Then what the fuck is going on?”

“Don’t be mad.”

“Tell me.”

“Please.”

“ _Tell_ me.”

“I think she is my soulmate. Also. Additionally.”

Villanelle continues to explain in hushed tones about a dream she had almost a year ago, the night after following Eve and Niko to an event at the school, of hesitating to kill Gemma because she somehow called her “Oksana”, and discovering an entry of a very similar dream in Gemma’s dream journal just a few weeks ago.

“But she doesn’t believe it.”

Eve blinks. Her brain can’t process the individual words as Villanelle says them. She perceives a color instead. A sort of reddish-purple haze. Burgundy?

“Eve.”

No, maybe maroon.

“Are you going to say anything?”

Words. Eve knows some words, doesn’t she? Put them in a sentence.

“Thank you for telling me the truth.”

Eve rests her head on the pillow.

Villanelle, meanwhile, props herself up on her elbow.

“You don’t want to talk any more?”

“I’m tired.”

“Are you angry?”

“I don’t know.”

She really doesn’t.

Anger has been Eve’s default state for so long, but when the world keeps giving her new things to be mad about, how is she supposed to register it anymore? How is she supposed to qualify the new levels of rage, when life keeps upping the ante?

Eve shoves the blanket away and rolls out of bed.

“Where are you going?”

Eve grabs the sweater she’d tossed on the floor earlier that evening and pulls it over her head.

“Don’t go, Eve. Stay. Please.”

“I need a minute.”

A minute, a month, a year. All Eve knows is she can’t stay still.

Eve grabs her coat on the way out the door. By the time she zips it, she’s already halfway down the block. She doesn’t bother taking the care she normally does to wrap her hair in a beanie, cover her face with a scarf. It’s late; there’s no one else out on the streets, and she kind of wants to feel the late October cold anyway. She craves numbness; it’s a break from fury.

Eve doesn’t pay much attention to her surroundings as she storms around the neighborhood, yet eventually, she notices a car. Following her. It’s hard to tell in the dark, especially since the car has its lights off. With the few glances she’s able to sneak in her peripheral vision, Eve surmises that it’s creeping along, following her path.

It could be harmless coincidence. There’s only one way to find out, and the surge of adrenaline through Eve’s system calculates that in this scenario, the stupidest and smartest courses of action overlap as one.

Eve comes to a dead stop, pivots, and looks right at the car.

Through the reflected streetlight she can just make out the face in the drivers seat, a dark-haired man with a stubbled chin.

Eve turns and runs for her life. Down to the end of the block, but she hears an engine kicking into gear behind her, so instead of rounding the corner, she jukes and runs into the yard of the house on the corner. She crashes through bushes, hops one fence, then another. Squeezes past trash bins and through backyards. She’s lost all sense of direction, but that’s good. Hopefully her pursuer has lost her.

What feels like an hour later, she climbs through a garden gate and sneaks a peek at the nearest street sign. She’s half a kilometer from Gemma’s. No cars on this road, save for those empty and parked.

She hoofs it back quick as she can and collapses on the couch, heart pounding. The surge of adrenaline gives way to fatigue and she’s out in an instant.

* * *

Eve’s the first one in the kitchen for breakfast, which is unusual. She brews a pot of coffee and takes down almost the whole thing on her own before Villanelle and Gemma shuffle down, each in their own time.

“About time,” Eve says, downing the last sip of her fourth cup of coffee. “We need to talk.”

Both women grow visibly uncomfortable. The cues are different for each: Gemma averts her gaze and blushes pink, while Villanelle raises her brows and widens her eyes in a strange approximation of playing innocent. No doubt, they’re both crawling out of their skin at the threat of Eve confronting them together.

So, when Eve explains what happened the previous night, they’re both strangely relieved. Tension melts into smiles, and Eve has to slap the table to get their attention. “Hello? Did you hear what I said? Twelve guy is here. In London. In the _neighborhood_.”

Villanelle squints at her. “Are you sure it was Ilya?”

“I thought his name was Ivan.” Off Villanelle’s withering look, Eve adds, “I’m sure.”

“You’re sure he saw you?”

“He looked right at me.”

Villanelle springs from her seat and grabs Eve by the collar. “Why didn’t you wake me? If he tailed you, we all could be dead right now.”

“Well, we’re not.”

Villanelle can’t argue with that, so she turns and marches upstairs.

Gemma busies herself finding breakfast and keeps her head buried in the fridge for far loner than seems necessary.

A few minutes later, Villanelle reappears, in discreet clothes, with a bag slung over her shoulder. This is enough to get Gemma to pop out from the refrigerator. “Are you leaving?” she asks.

“If Ilya knows we are still here, we need to move up the plan. As soon as possible. Which means I need to go get our documents.”

Eve cuts in, “I thought you said they won’t be ready for–”

“Another two weeks, but if I drop in on my friend, perhaps I can give him some incentive. Also, two birds – I will go be seen.”

“I thought you’re trying not to be seen,” Gemma says.

“Exactly. I will make it look like I’m trying not to be seen, but I will make sure they see me.”

“I’m lost,” Gemma confesses.

“I will lead Ilya on a goose chase. Make sure he follows after me and doesn’t come dropping in on you two. And then lead him back so he can watch when the time comes.” Villanelle moves towards the door, grabs a jacket.

Eve wants to tell her to stay. Or say that they should go together. She turns around in her chair. Watches Villanelle, standing right by the door, ready to go at any moment.

“Be careful,” Eve says.

Villanelle shakes her head slightly, as if to say, _“I can’t promise that”_. Then her parting message for them: “Don’t kill each other while I am gone.”

 _I can’t promise that_.

* * *

With Eve and Gemma left alone once again, they revert to tiptoeing around each other, like last time. Gemma’s tiptoeing is more of the metaphorical variety; her presence is not so tiny as it once was, so she’s not very sneaky as she moves from room to room. Though she never complains, at least not to Eve, her discomfort and fatigue are clearly growing by the day, much like her stomach. Eve wonders why she insists on continuing to teach until they send her home, though she’s also grateful for the time alone. Eve can’t very well go traipsing around London during the day now, not even bundled up, so it’s nice to have the house to herself.

Today, Eve sits at the kitchen table and spreads out the stack of business cards Gemma retrieved from her OB/GYN: contact info for a variety of medical specialists in the area. Hopefully, one of them will be greedy or shady enough to accept a bribe to declare Eve dead.

So, how does one try to offer a bribe for illegal activity over the phone?

Eve settles on a vague opener to gauge the personality of each doctor. The first seven she calls offer predictably clinical responses, inviting Eve to book an appointment for further consultation.

She’s very surprised when Dr. Anthony Ruttenberg, general practitioner, answers her with casual flair. “Yellow?”

Eve pauses, momentarily taken aback by his accent. “You’re, um, American?”

“So are you,” the doctor replies.

“Well. You got me there.”

“What seems to be the problem, my expat friend?”

Eve clears her throat, then falls back on the script she’s been using all morning. “I hurt my ankle.”

“How?”

“I’ve been on the run.”

“Oh yeah? From what?”

“Most doctors would tell me to stop running.”

Dr. Ruttenberg laughs, sounding more like a college student at a bar than a licensed medical professional. “Nah, not me. I hear what you’re saying. What can I get for you… scrips? Oxy, Percocet?”

“I had something else in mind. A more permanent solution.”

A few lines of film-noir-esque codespeak later, Eve is pretty sure she’s set a meeting for an exchange of cash and agreement of the circumstances of the death-fake with Dr. Ruttenberg. Either that or he’s presently phoning the police to report her suspicious request. The fee he asked for wasn’t small, either – Eve hopes Villanelle has enough cash across all her secret hiding spots to cover it. Who knew dying would be so expensive?

That’s one task done. Now the rest of the day looms in front of her.

Eve can only watch so much daytime TV (though her threshold is higher than most people’s). She can only feed Pompom so many times. She can only shower for so long. She can only stomach so much of the boring classical texts and pulpy romance novels that line Gemma’s bookshelves. She’s never missed her MI5 office job so much.

She wishes that she hadn’t found success so promptly with the doctor, because with no job, no task, to occupy her, she has no alternative but to think about the situation. Gemma and Villanelle are lucky; they get to run off and be distracted. They get to avoid this little triangle they’ve created.

God, Eve thought she was done with this juvenile shit, but apparently, a normal relationship is too much to ask for.

This only goes to prove what Eve had always felt: the concept of soulmates isn’t a magic solution. Here she is, supposedly living the live everyone else envies, with Villanelle as her universe-confirmed soulmate (for all the hell she had to go through to get there). And what happens next? Her soulmate has another soulmate. The same woman that her husband cheated on her with.

If it happened to someone else, Eve would be laughing her ass off.

With the rest of the afternoon stretching in front of her, Eve can’t help herself. She marches into Gemma’s room. Only a minute of searching before she finds a notebook in the nightstand that must be the famous dream journal.

She tucks it under her arm and heads downstairs – she’ll want a drink for this.

Glass of wine in hand, Eve flips through the early pages. Scans through entries written in suspiciously neat lettering (teacher handwriting). Gags every time she sees _Niko_ written with a little extra care. At least there are no hearts above the “i”. Luckily, none of the dreams that mention Niko are particularly juicy. Mostly slice of life, school-settings. There’s a surreal scene here or there.

All in all, nothing too unusual, until she finds the spot Villanelle described. A missing page. The beginning of an entry on February 4th, Teachers’ Night. That was in fact the night Eve attended; she remembers because in the brief phase of optimism she and Niko were experiencing, they made Valentine’s Day plans (which, needless to say, never went through).

Though the bulk of it was torn out, the short paragraph on the preceding page makes it clear enough where the dream was heading. Turns out Villanelle was telling the truth after all.

At least, about one thing. Gemma had a dream about Villanelle. But are they really soulmates? Or is it just a sex dream? People have meaningless dreams all the time.

Eve’s pretty sure even _she_ had a sex dream about Gemma once, though she tried pretty hard to repress it. One night in the period she now thinks of as _The Crumbling_ , her stress-addled brain which was slowly beginning to admit her attraction to Villanelle, and by extension, women, found another woman to latch onto. And Gemma had the whole anger-jealousy angle. And those tits. Body chemistry, that’s all.

Dreams don’t always mean something. In fact, most dreams don’t mean shit.

She’s so caught up in this line of thinking, she must’ve missed the sound of the door, because the next thing she hears is Gemma’s voice. “Oh dear.”

She drops her school bag on the floor, and leans on the wall for support while she takes off her shoes. Eve almost laughs, because for once, Gemma’s priorities make sense – if they’re going to _do this_ , better get comfortable first.

“I had to know if Villanelle was telling the truth,” Eve says. “And it turns out she was.”

“It’s not how she tells it.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“It’s not,” Gemma repeats, firmer this time. She takes a few steps towards Eve, bold now. “You don’t have anything to worry about. She has a wrong idea.”

Eve stops to consider. At least in this regard, Gemma and Villanelle have told her the same story: that Villanelle made an advance, and Gemma denied it.

“But in the interest of honesty, there’s something else I need to tell you.” Gemma pauses and avoids Eve’s gaze. “She came to me, at work, to tell me what she’d found. We did, erm, kiss.”

Maroon, again.

Eve thinks of their encounter the other day. Gemma insisted Villanelle was interested in her. Bragged about it. This isn’t about clearing her conscience; Gemma wants Eve’s anger. She _loves_ it. Why else would she tell Eve this, unless she wanted to be punished?

She takes a step towards Gemma, staring down at the terrified, exhilarated face before her.

Maybe Eve can’t have a normal relationship, but this much she can do. Be the villain. Be the angry scorned woman.

“How could you do this?” Eve says, backing Gemma up. “Again. Again. It’s not coincidence. If the same thing happens over and over the common factor is you.”

Gemma’s eyes water. Maybe this is more than she bargained for but it’s too late, it’s happening. She hits the wall. Eve grabs her by the sweater.

“Your fault. Bad things happen all around you. You can try to justify it. Tell yourself you’re a good person, just unlucky, wrong place at the wrong time. But how long does that excuse last?”

As words spill out of Eve’s mouth, her mind isn’t focused on the blush of Gemma’s cheeks, or the tears threatening to pour down her cheeks any moment. For some reason her brain conjures images that are entirely unrelated: Bill’s open casket. Four people dead in a hospital room. Kenny’s body, limp on concrete.

“You can call it bad luck. A string of coincidences. But eventually you have to accept that you are the the problem. It’s _you_. They’re all dead because of _you_.”

She lets Gemma go, throwing her against the wall, but she doesn’t cry out. Her tears have dried, and now she looks at Eve with concern.

Eve turns away. Something went very wrong here. She digs inside, trying to muster the anger she needs to take out some primal vengeance on Gemma… that will get her back on track. She tries to picture Villanelle kissing Gemma to stoke the fire, but different faces appear instead. Frank. Zhang Wu. Carla de Mann. Kasia Molkovska, who started it all.

“Go ahead, if you want to let me have it,” Gemma says, a halfhearted invitation to Eve. “Don’t hold back. I deserve it.”

“No, you don’t.” Eve’s voice comes out low.

“I do. I’ve been horrible.”

“What. A little flirting? A little cheating?” Eve laughs. “How about leaving a friend to die? How about killing? How about letting so many innocent people die you can’t even…” Eve’s voice chokes off, just like it did when she cried for help in vain, with her hands over Kasia’s slit throat, trying to stop the blood.

“Eve?”

“It was my job to protect her,” Eve says.

Gemma’s clearly lost, but she comes over to Eve’s side, and nods. Listening.

“It was my job to catch her killer. Who killed all the others,” Eve continues. “I didn’t protect any of them. And now here I am.”

Eve’s been burning, burning, burning for so long, but it’s all burned away. All of the substance, the fuel inside her is gone. She’s nothing but ash.

“After what you’ve been through, it’s natural to be angry,” Gemma says.

Eve shakes her head. “I’ve been so angry for so long. I’m exhausted.”

“In that case, maybe it’s time to let go of it,” Gemma says.

“But then I’ll have nothing.” And with that, Eve realizes anger is all that has been holding her together for the past six months, or longer. “There needs to be someone to blame. Don’t you get it?” Eve grabs Gemma by the shoulders. “There needs to be someone or something that is the cause. I need to make someone pay for it. Because otherwise, all these awful things that have happened mean nothing. All this pain can’t be for nothing. There has to be a reason.”

Before she knows it, she’s crying.

Not like the tears that have escaped here and there, over tea, walking around the neighborhood. The dam has broken, and Eve is bawling like a baby, hating every second of it. This is probably retribution for not allowing “healthy” releases throughout her life. Here come the tears she was supposed to spend on Niko. On Kenny. On Bill. On Raymond, even. On Kasia and Frank and probably her parents’ divorce, too.

Eve collapses into Gemma’s arms, burying her face in Gemma’s shoulder. The embrace that tightens around her isn’t just Gemma, though. It’s Elena. It’s Bill. It’s her father.

And, yes, it’s Gemma too. Hugging her tight. Not saying a word.

She held Kasia as she died. Had her hand over Kasia’s neck while it spilled blood. The wound that Villanelle made. When a few weeks later she’d end up holding her hand on Villanelle, over a wound she herself made.

“I wanted to save her,” Eve sobs. “I wanted to protect her. It was my job, but I really did want to protect people. What happened to me?”

“Shh. It’s alright.” Gemma puts her arms around Eve. Of course, it’s easy for Gemma to comfort her. She didn’t know Eve back then. She has no concept of how far Eve’s fallen. If she had the before and after, she’d be as horrified as Niko was.

But she can’t put all that into words, with the sadness wracking her body in spasms. “You don’t know,” she repeats. “You don’t know.”

“Maybe not,” Gemma says. “For the longest time, all I knew of you was what Niko said. His descriptions.”

Eve shrinks inside herself. That’s not going to be flattering.

But Gemma smiles as she continues. “For all that I could see the difficulty of your marriage through the way he spoke about it, I could also see the depth of his love. And as soon as I met you, I understood why. Instantly. You’re an incredible person, Eve. By a very entrance into a room, you impress.”

“Thanks,” Eve sniffs, “But that’s not really what I’m concerned about right now…”

“Listen to me,” Gemma says. “I won’t lie, Eve. You frighten me sometimes. But you’re intimidating because of how clear it is you’re fighting for what’s important. Because of how clear it is you’ve already been through hell and survived.”

Eve forgot what it was like to have someone there for her. Someone to listen. And comfort. Niko used to provide that, but his kindness was often so extreme it veered into passive aggression. Villanelle, to be fair, has put in an effort lately, but this isn’t her strength.

Gemma knows how to listen, though. She knows what to say and when to not say anything. And it’s everything Eve needs. Everything she’s been missing. She’s a regular person, but she knows the extent of Eve’s craziness. If someone like Gemma can forgive her, then maybe there’s hope for Eve after all.

Eve cries into Gemma’s chest. The scene that sounds like something from Eve’s worst nightmare, is exactly what she needs. For the first time Eve has someone who’s not judging, not manipulating her to any end, someone who’s truly uninvolved, who knows the whole mess and is not calling the police, is not pushing her away, is just saying, “ _That sucks_.” And that’s incredible.

Eve needs a while. Gemma doesn’t rush her.

* * *

Neither Eve nor Gemma feels like cooking after that, so they order takeout. Stuffing their mouths full of Chinese food provides a suitable cool-down from _words_.

Eventually, scraping the last grains of fried rice from her plate, Gemma braves conversation. “I don’t want to ruin anything. So I will only say this once. Before she comes back."

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Please. Let me say it once. For my sake.”

Eve blinks.

“Eve, I swear. Nothing more will happen. This idea Villanelle has… it’s wrong.” Gemma swallows. “What the two of you have is special. I have no intention of getting in the middle. Villanelle will get bored of this fantasy soon enough.”

Eve almost voices the question in her head, that’s been brewing ever since Villanelle’s confession that night: why does Villanelle _need_ a fantasy in the first place? Eve thought she was supposed to be Villanelle’s fantasy. Wasn’t that their whole shtick? Throw away everything else for each other? Now that Villanelle has Eve, it’s suddenly not enough?

But that’s a big question for the end of a long day.

“Forget it,” Eve mutters. “You want the last dumpling?”

The question is a formality, since Gemma took down most of the order, but as Gemma happily reaches for the dumpling, she stops and puts a hand to her stomach.

“Okay over there?”

“Kicking, that’s all,” Gemma says. “Always seems to perk up when I’m home. Gets to nap during the day while I’m working my arse off. Really active this afternoon. I think it likes the sound of your voice.”

Eve furrows her brow. “Why _are_ you still working?”

“I’m fully capable.” Gemma pops the last dumpling in her mouth. “Why leave when the students need me?”

“For starters, because I notice you getting winded every time you go up the stairs. What’s stopping you from taking a rest?”

“If I stop working that means the baby’s coming,” Gemma blurts, her face twisting into absolute terror.

“It’s gonna come whether you stop working or not,” Eve says.

“Do you want it? The baby?” Gemma blurts. Before Eve can even formulate a response, she barrels on. “I mean it’s Niko’s, which means it really should be yours, and it’s the least I can do to, erm, give you, the baby.”

Eve grasps her hand, trying to pull her out of shock. “Gemma. Let me be very clear. I never wanted kids. And I certainly don’t want your child.”

Gemma blinks in confusion. “My?”

“It sure as hell’s not _mine_.” Slowly, it dawns on Eve, as it seems to be dawning on Gemma at the same moment, that she’s never really taken ownership of the baby before. _The baby_. _Niko’s baby._

Niko isn’t coming for it anytime soon, though.

“My… child.” Gemma stares off, unfocused.

“Gemma?” Eve repeats once, twice. “Hello? You alright?”

“Yes,” she answers, suddenly. “It’s a bit frightening, is all. To take this on by myself.”

 _Yeah. It’ll be really hard_ , Eve thinks. Which is why she’s never wanted it. “You’ll be great,” she says, pressing her lips into what she hopes is an encouraging smile. “And I think if you let yourself off the hook to rest and prepare, you’ll feel better.”

“You may be right,” Gemma sighs. “I suppose I should start getting ready properly. Do all those steps the books say for the final months that I’ve been ignoring. Turn the guest room into a nursery.”

Eve nods, realizing that means she and Villanelle will be long gone.

For the first time, Eve thinks about Gemma’s life before they came along. She had one, of course, and she’ll have one after they go. She’ll have Pompom, and work, and a baby. Eve and Villanelle will flee to Canada or wherever they end up, and their lives might never intersect with Gemma’s again.

And that’s good. Isn’t it?

* * *

Villanelle returns a week later with a thick, lumpy manila envelope full of documents. Eve doesn’t ask about her trip. Villanelle doesn’t ask what happened while she was gone. Gemma doesn’t ask anything, either. They’ve all come to the same conclusion that it’s just easier this way. They have a brief conference, pooling information – documents taken care of, location secured, medical conspirator found, Ilya on their trail, set to close in any day now. All that’s left to do is settle the details of the the actual performance.

“How’s next Friday?” Villanelle says.

No one has a conflict.

Setting a deadline is like a pressure release. Happy ending or tragic, this story’s _ending_. Knowing that is enough to produce a strange harmony in the house. For the first time, the three of them can act like normal humans around each other. Like they’re just crashing for a week, before a big trip.

“Have you made plans for how you’re going to, you know?” Villanelle asks Gemma one night.

“To what?”

“You’re due soon, yeah?” Villanelle makes a popping sound with her lips.

Gemma blushes. “I suppose the normal way. Hospital. Drugs.”

“Are you scared?”

“There’s no reason to be,” Eve says. “It’s down to a science. But you can read about everything that happens if you wanna be real prepared.” She recalls the thick, detailed books that Jess or her other pregnant coworkers would leave around the office, that she’d flipped through from time to time. She saw enough gruesome photos to feel like she wasn’t the weird one for preferring to read about assassins.

“Reading up about labor only frightens me more,” Gemma murmurs. “I haven’t had a peaceful night’s sleep since I learned what an episiotomy is.”

Villanelle lights up with curiosity. “What is that?”

“You don’t want to know,” Gemma assures her.

“Come on, tell me.”

“Seriously. We’re doing you a favor. You’ll regret it if you find out,” Eve says.

Villanelle pouts and walks off in a huff. A minute later, an agonized cry from the kitchen.

“Vill? Everything alright?”

“I looked it up!”

Eve glances over to Gemma, who smiles and shakes her head.

Things are, for lack of a better word, nice.

It turns out the three of them get along well. they simply don’t address the tangled web of tension woven between them. Villanelle puts on a movie, and Eve doesn’t pay much attention to the stupid romantic comedy she plucks from Gemma’s DVD collection, she takes stock of the peace in the room. Pompom clearly notices too, as he pads into the room shortly after the start of the movie and nestles himself in the gap between Eve and Gemma on the couch.

Eve can’t say what triggers it: the low light, the soft background chatter from the movie, or when her hand brushes Gemma’s as they both reach for some popcorn. All at once, a fuzzy picture comes together in Eve’s mind… a stairwell… auburn hair and soft creamy skin… cheap wine in plastic cups…

Each fragment falls together like pieces of a puzzle until CRASH, it forms a crystal-clear memory Eve hasn’t thought about in ages. _Teachers’ Night_. High emotions, stress hormones, to which she attributed the very strange dream she had that night.

The night Eve first met Gemma.

Most dreams don’t mean shit, but…

Everything just became far more complicated or far more simple than Eve thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was hard, but also one I was really excited for, for a long time.
> 
> Hope I can stick the landing here...
> 
> tell me your thoughts in the comments or on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xoxo


	10. Chapter 10

Gemma was reluctant to let go for so long, but once she starts to loosen up, it happens at at once.

Starting leave from work didn’t have to mean going full slob, and Gemma swore to herself she wouldn’t totally let herself go. After all, she still has two guests in the house, so it’s not exactly the full privacy she once had. She’ll still get dressed every morning, present herself the same as she would at work. Or so she tells herself.

But that first morning, when she’s able to sleep until the blissful hour of eight o’clock… The first time she rolls out of bed and doesn’t put on makeup (indeed, the first time in more years than she can remember)… As she looks in her closet longingly at her size D bras, and non-maternity dresses, pushed way in the back, untouched for months… The first time she closes her armoire without selecting a maternity dress and compression stockings…

Instead, she opts for the singular, well-worn but comfortable pair of sweatpants, the only pair that she owns, which she contemplated throwing away about a dozen times because the elastic was shot, though now it stretches to its limit.

She steels her nerves as she walks downstairs, clutching the banister, keenly aware this is the sloppiest she’s looked in front of her tenants since they arrived. She braces herself for the looks of shock, the snide comments…

But when she walks into the kitchen, she’s greeted with banging on the table, hoots and hollers. They’re cheering for her.

“About time,” Eve laughs. “God, I was starting to think when your water broke you’d stop to touch up your makeup before going to the hospital.”

There’s no going back from that.

Suffice it to say, her sweatpants have their glory days. But the comfort of casualwear and the relief of a break from work only do so much, with her due date rapidly approaching. Though thinking about the due date and what comes after is more terrifying than anything, so Gemma stays in the present, painful symptoms, criminal activity, awkward emotions and all.

Though it’s a little less awkward, lately. It seems like Eve and Villanelle both had some issues they had to sort out, and, well, if Gemma was able to help them at all, then she’s happy. That’s what she repeats to herself as she watches them converse, leaning in to whisper with each other about the finer details of the plan. Knees brushing together beneath the table. A hand resting on a thigh while conversation hums comfortably above.

Gemma blinks and shakes her head. It’s great that Eve and Villanelle are on good terms now; the rest is none of her business.

“Let’s do the checklist one more time,” Eve says, while Gemma walks through the kitchen, bringing a dirty mug to the sink to rinse.

“Do we have to?” Villanelle groans. The answer is implied, because she continues, “We show up to the apartment that morning. Acting all day, in case they’re listening. We talk about the future. We pack our bags. Talk about Alaska. Then we run the scene like so – I’ll grab the gun–”

“Prepped with two blanks,” Eve cuts in.

“Prepped with two blanks,” Villanelle repeats with an eye roll. “Follow you outside, where they’ll be watching, plus other witnesses. I fire, you activate your squib and play dead.”

“That’s my cue,” Gemma says, walking over to the table.

Both Eve and Villanelle look up, like they didn’t know she was there. Then, surprise turns to sheepishness.

“What?” Gemma says. “Did I get the cue wrong? Or did the plan change?”

“The thing is…” Eve begins. “We were talking, and, we realized, we can probably do it with just Dr. Ruttenberg.”

“There’s no reason for you to be there, putting yourself at risk,” Villanelle adds, “Especially… as you are.”

“Are you saying,” Gemma says. “That I am fired because I’m too pregnant?”

“Not like that,” Villanelle says quickly. “We thought it would take some pressure off.”

“It’s nothing personal,” Eve adds. “But you can barely make it from the kitchen to the living room these days without a break. Maybe we should play it safe.”

“You want to play it safe?” Gemma snaps. “You need me. You think no one’s going to bat an eye that the first person who rushes over just happens to be a doctor and tells everyone else to keep away?” Before they can muster up another excuse, Gemma continues. “What’s far less suspicious is the poor innocent pregnant woman who stumbles upon lovers’ violence on her nightly walk. Who cries out for help, and the doctor hears. A woman nine months pregnant could never be involved in a conspiracy. And if someone offers to help, do you think the doctor can cry and scream bloody murder to distract them?”

Villanelle looks over to Eve. “She is _really_ good at crying.”

“I want to help,” Gemma insists. “I _have_ to help.”

“Guess it was your idea,” Eve sighs. “Technically.”

Gemma smiles, and joins them at the table, trading foot pain for pelvic pain – that’s her game, these days. Juggling discomfort. She pulls her hair back into a ponytail, tying it off with an elastic as she leans forward, looking at some papers laid out on the table. “What’s this?”

“The script,” Eve explains.

“I don’t think we need one,” Villanelle mutters. “I like to improvise.”

“I’m not leaving anything up to chance.”

Gemma reaches out, then pauses. “May I?”

Neither Eve nor Villanelle reacts, so Gemma takes this as an affirmative. She pulls the looseleaf papers close, recognizing the text as Eve’s looping scrawl, messy yet elegant. It’s written out like a play script, except the lines aren’t labeled, so Gemma supposes Eve must know in her head which lines belong to whom.

_You thought we’d be like Bonnie and Clyde? Go on a killing spree? … Stop it. … This is what you wanted. … I love you, I do. … You don’t know what that means._

“Wow.” Gemma looks up at Eve. “You wrote this?”

Villanelle shifts uncomfortably, while Eve avoids her gaze. “Um, both of us did.”

Too late, Gemma understands. Her eyes flick back down to the paper.

_I thought you were special._

_Sorry to disappoint_.

It’s a pointed reminder that Eve and Villanelle have a rich history. Drama to rival Shakespeare’s catalogue, that, even after two months, Gemma has only scratched the surface of. Silly, but it reminds her of a bit in that stupid dream, that dream that Gemma wished she never had, or never wrote down, or at least had the sense to _fully_ tear out from her journal. The bit when it was only Eve and Villanelle, when they forgot about Gemma’s presence within her own dreamscape. When they exchanged words that meant everything to them and nothing to Gemma. Their own language of love and hate. Where her brain even got that bit, Gemma’s not sure. But one thing remains constant, past and present, dream and reality: Gemma is merely a witness to it all. The scene plays out, and then the curtain falls, the actors leave, and Gemma wakes. Alone.

“I suppose that’s all,” Eve says, finally. She takes the papers back, and moves to the living room, soon followed by Villanelle.

As she lingers at the table alone, Gemma considers how quiet the house will be without them. Though their stay has been chaotic, and downright painful at times, Gemma’s grown accustomed to the chaos, and she isn’t sure what she’ll do when it’s only her and Pompom again.

Then, a kick, reminding Gemma for better or for worse, that a large distraction is on its way, soon.

* * *

Without work, the days pass much faster than Gemma is used to, and suddenly, it’s Thursday evening. Tomorrow they Execute the Plan. As agreed upon, Eve and Villanelle will leave in the morning, so this right here, as they sit casually watching the ending of a movie, while Villanelle carefully loads blank rounds into a gun, and Eve pours fake blood into squib packs, is their last night together.

Meanwhile, Gemma tries to sort out the feelings buzzing round her head like a swarm of bees. She spends most of the third act of the movie distracted, trying to wrestle the feelings into coherent sentences, but it’s impossible to find the proper words. Once the credits roll, and Eve and Villanelle begin to stir, Gemma realizes this is her only chance.

“Wait,” she tells them.

They freeze, and Gemma’s throat seizes up in fear. Perhaps she ought not to speak, but then again, she’ll regret it more if she says nothing.

“In case I don’t get to speak to you two again once it all begins,” Gemma takes a deep breath, partly because her breath is genuinely short these days, partly to stall. “It has been terrifying, getting to know you, but it’s not going to be the same when you’re gone. And… I…” Despite her agonizing preparation, struggles for the right words about what this time has meant.

“You don’t know that it’s the last time,” Villanelle jumps in. “You might run into us again. Or we might call, if we need a place to stay again.” She says it with the lilt of a joke, though the mood prevents it from landing.

“No. You can’t,” Gemma says. “Remember what that woman Carolyn said? The last thing you need is to be free and clear and then caught because you drop me a line. It’s best this way. But before it all goes down, I wanted to say a proper goodbye.”

Neither Eve nor Villanelle pipes up with a speech. Gemma can’t blame them, springing this emotional confession on them. She’s glad she said her piece, and that’s that.

* * *

Gemma goes to bed that night fully expecting not to get a wink of sleep, but at least she can lie still and pretend. She tries to keep her mind off of imagining every possible way the plan can go wrong by picturing her bookshelf and trying to alphabetize the titles in her mind.

A few minutes later, even with her eyes shut, she’s aware of a beam of light falling on her face from the door creaking open.

Gemma should’ve expected this might happen, on their last night here. She takes a deep breath to prepare herself.

But when she opens her eyes, it isn’t Villanelle’s silhouette in the dark. She blinks to be sure, but the shadow standing above her is Eve.

“I have to tell you something. Ask you something. I don’t know.” Eve shifts her weight back and forth in the dark.

“What’s wrong?” Gemma sits up.

“I didn’t remember – but then it all came back, and it’s going to drive me mad. If it’s coincidence it’s the weirdest coincidence in the fucking world–”

“Eve, slow down.”

“That night. Teacher’s night. We met.” Eve pauses, as if gathering her strength. “I … dreamed.”

“Really?” Gemma’s pulse quickens.

“I don’t know why I’m even– You didn’t, so it’s moot, I guess I’m nervous and I… forget I said anything.”

Eve moves towards the door, but with a burst of adrenaline, Gemma lunges forward on the bed and manages to grab Eve’s hand before she goes. “Wait! It’s not a coincidence. I also. Dreamed.”

“But I thought… Villanelle,” Eve says, consternation crossing her face. “I read the journal.”

“That wasn’t all of it,” Gemma murmurs. Her face grows hot, as she debates how to explain the full content of the dream to Eve. “After. The part I tore out.”

Then, the creak of the door, a shadow blocking the light from the hall. “What is going on in here?”

Eve snaps to Villanelle at the doorway. “What are you doing here?”

“I was going to talk to Gemma,” Villanelle says, like it’s obvious. “Why are _you_ in here?”

“Why don’t you mind your fucking business?”

“Everyone listen!” Gemma snaps before they can bicker any more. “There’s been a lot of confusion… a lot of faulty speculation. Incomplete information. But I think I may have figured it out.”

“Villanelle,” Gemma begins. “You say that the night we met, you had a dream of you and me. Is that right?”

Villanelle nods.

“Eve. Now, you’ve told me you had a dream that same night, that involved you and me. Is that correct?”

Villanelle looks at Eve, absolutely gobsmacked. Gemma’s never seen her look so shocked. Eve slowly, almost imperceptibly, nods.

“Eve?” Villanelle whispers. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

But Eve ignores this, and takes another step towards the bed. “Gemma, what exactly did _you_ dream that night?”

“Both of you.”

Though Gemma’s words were barely a squeak, they rock the room like an earthquake.

Eve and Villanelle are stunned, as is Gemma herself. But once it’s been said aloud, no one has any rebuttal.

“This can’t be real,” Eve says, breaking the silence. “I mean, there’s got to be another explanation.”

“What else could it be?” Villanelle says.

“Multiple soulmates,” Gemma murmurs. “I’ve never heard of it happening, but…”

“So then any of us could work… with any of us?”

“No,” Gemma says. She pulls herself over to the edge of the bed and sets her feet on the floor. She looks Villanelle in the eyes. “I dreamt that you and I,” – she turns to address Eve – “ _and_ you and I– and then, the two of you– and then… All of us.” Gemma swallows, shaking her head. “Not any. _All_.”

Eve and Villanelle exchange a look. Gemma’s heart pounds, ready for them to call her insane and run out, but neither says a word. For as ridiculous as it is… it feels right.

Right, but not simple.

Gemma fantasized of this soulmate reveal enough times in her life. Whenever she reached this moment in movies and books, she was filled with a vicarious thrill, imagining that perfect kiss, that once in a lifetime embrace…

Now, everything’s topsy turvy. Aside from how awkward it is on a fundamental level, if Gemma were to try to play out the fantasy she’s imagined so many times, to reach out for an embrace, a kiss, who should she even reach for?

They stand still, waiting for some clue from the universe, apparently; though, the universe seems to have clocked out for now, plumb tuckered from handing out dream clues.

Surprisingly enough, it’s Eve who first dares to ask, “What are we supposed to do now?”

The question hangs in the air like the dagger before Macbeth. No one is prepared to handle it.

So Gemma tries. “You go get a good night’s sleep. Because the most important thing is that everything goes according to plan tomorrow.”

None of them says the obvious: if the plan doesn’t work, then it doesn’t matter what else they might do.

* * *

Eve and Villanelle are already gone in the morning. At first, Gemma’s worried that they didn’t wake her. Did they not want to see her after the conversation last night? Too complicated, too messy, not worth the bother?

And… Did it even happen? Or did Gemma dream it all again?

Her heart pounds anxiously, til she makes it down to the kitchen. On the table, a small bluetooth earpiece is laid out, next to some papers – the script, with one paper on the top turned over. Gemma picks it up. In Eve’s handwriting:

_Wanted to let you sleep. We’ll work on phase one all day. Stay safe at home. We’ll warn you if there are any delays but if you hear nothing assume we are on schedule. Starting at 7:00, listen for your cue._

The note is signed _Eve_ , plus a large, swooping _V_ with two thick strokes next to it that presumably, Villanelle signed off herself.

_P.S. – If we don’t see you. Thank you._

After that there’s a small scribble like Eve began to write something else, then crossed it out.

Honestly, the finer details of the plan elude Gemma, though she stopped asking for clarification days ago. It’s not important that she understands every detail. Though her role is small, she’ll stick to her lane so she doesn’t bring it all crashing down.

All alone in the house, the next several hours pass like molasses.

Bursts of giddiness when Gemma recalls the confirmed fact that she has not one, but two soulmates, alternate with bursts of sorrow, when she recalls the equally immutable fact that they have to run off, tonight, and she may never see them again.

Or will they? A selfish seed sprouts inside Gemma. To ask them to stay. Once their pursuers give up chase, they could stay here with her, to continue as they have been, to finally make good on what the universe has been trying to tell them this whole time––

But that’s dreadfully selfish, indeed. Gemma can’t ask them to do that. It’s naive– no, it’s plain _stupid_. There’s more than a broken heart at stake here.

* * *

Gemma’s impatient. She turns on the earpiece at 6:45.

She starts her walk early. The building Villanelle choose, apparently one where she lived previously, is near the center of London, not far from the Thames. A rather expensive area, though this is no surprise, knowing Villanelle. Again, Gemma finds herself caught up in questions, as she has been all day, about the significance of this location. When had Villanelle lived there, and for how long? What did she and Eve do there together? Why did they choose it for tonight? (Gemma has learned well enough by now that those two love some good symbolism in their relationship.)

All these questions and more rattle around her brain as she walks down the street, perfectly immersed in her role as innocent civilian, because that’s what she is. A mere bystander to their relationship. If they survive tonight, if she ever sees them again, for even a few minutes, Gemma vows to ask these questions. She has to know everything. She has to know the story properly.

Then, a buzz of static in her ear – she’s close enough to the flat that the audio signal picks up. Villanelle is mid-sentence, saying something about Alaska.

Gemma swiftly crosses the street, looping her route towards the flat. It’s almost time. Her pulse quickens, partly from power-walking, partly from snooping on this private moment snipped from Eve and Villanelle’s history.

_“Since when do you have a gun?”_

Gemma quickens her pace. It’s almost time.

_“I’m going home.”_

_“Eve, you can’t go home. You’re ruining the moment.”_

_“What do you think is happening here?”_

The pain is evident in Eve’s voice makes it evident, even if Gemma didn’t already know, that this is no play script. Gemma aches in unison as she listens to the heart-wrenching confrontation. It’s unadulterated Eve and Villanelle, tragic, yet _pure_ somehow.

 _Part of the balance of the universe_ , she muses, _to have two people you love so dearly, but also to know they share a place in their hearts and memories you can’t join them_.

Christ above, Gemma does _love_ them. What a terrible time to come to that realization.

_“You’re mine!”_

Her cue.

Gemma hoofs it half a block towards the building, trying to hide the fact that she’s obviously hurrying. Just as she reaches the corner, Eve bursts out of the door, closely followed by Villanelle. They pause, and Gemma follows Villanelle’s gaze around the square until it settles on a car parked about a hundred meters down the road. There’s a man inside who fits the description Eve and Villanelle told her: dark hair, strong jaw covered in stubble. That must be Ivan-whoever.

“Eve!” Villanelle shouts, face contorted in a very convincing display of anger. A few passersby turn their heads.

Eve keeps walking.

“I thought you were special.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint,” Eve says, then continues walking away.

The choreography is really something. Even though Gemma knows exactly what’s happening, it’s convincing. Eve’s hand slips into her trouser pockets for a moment, and Gemma knows, she’s activating the squib pack under her sweater. But at the same moment, Villanelle raises the gun, and fires. _BANG. SPLOOSH_. Blood explodes from Eve’s torso, and she falls to the ground.

Gemma takes a deep breath and screams with all her might.

She rushes over to Eve, continuing to scream all the while. When she reaches Eve, she has the odd urge to bend down and actually check if Eve’s alright – the pool of fake blood around her looks frighteningly real. But she remembers these few moments are the most important, and shouts: “Is anyone here a doctor?”

“Step aside!” Comes the shout from somewhere behind her. Gemma turns, to find a young man in a button-down shirt and khakis running towards them. He speaks with an American accent, so he must be the doctor Eve found. “I’ll help her,” he proclaims, then bends down, next to Gemma. “I was told I’d have a fellow actor on the scene,” he breathes, grinning. “Nice to meet you. Very convincing.”

Then, before Gemma can respond, the doctor shouts, “I need some space! Please, keep everyone back!”

Gemma cries a bit more, pushing her pitch as high as she can go. She’s gotten enough complaints in her life to know what register she can use to really put people off. Luckily, most bystanders seem put off already by the violence, and are backing away from the scene. Especially because Villanelle is still standing there, gun in her hands.

“Got a friend prepped with an ambulance,” the doctor murmurs to Gemma. “Should be here any–”

Then, the wail of sirens, and the ambulance pulls up at the curb. Immediately, a paramedic hops out, and assists the doctor in lifting Eve’s body into the back.

At this point, Gemma chances a look back at the car down on the corner. She can’t resist seeing if the guest of honor is buying the performance.

The good news is, he looks invested. The bad news is, he’s getting out of the car, and walking towards them.

Gemma’s heart starts pounding. She sees the imminent disaster heading her way, but she has to play her part, and besides, it’s not like she could do anything to stop this thug even if she wanted to. She gathers her breath to scream again, if she can do nothing else, but then–

_BANG!_

“Hey, Ilya!” Villanelle shouts, gun pointed at the sky. Then, she shouts something else, though Gemma doesn’t need to speak Russian to recognize it as an insult.

Ilya freezes, eyes darting between the paramedic shutting the back of the ambulance, and Villanelle waving a gun around. Eventually, he decides that live Villanelle is more enticing than dying Eve, and charges after her, pulling a gun of his own.

Villanelle laughs, and lets him catch up a few lengths before she runs.

“Come on.” Gemma feels a tug on her arm, and almost screams, until she notices it’s only Dr. Ruttenberg behind her. “You’re coming with, right?”

Gemma breathes a sigh of relief once the ambulance starts moving. “Eve,” she murmurs, nudging Eve on the arm. Eve doesn’t respond.

“Shot her up with some sedative,” Dr. Ruttenberg explains, before Gemma can ask. “Temporary. Extra precaution in case anyone sees. It’d look pretty funky if we walked her into the morgue on her own two feet.”

Gemma nods, though her stomach turns at the sight. Limp and covered in blood, Eve _really_ looks dead.

Dr. Ruttenberg, for his part, is absolutely giddy for the rest of the car ride. “This is so exciting. Thanks so much for inviting me. Turns out being a doctor is not nearly as fun as TV makes it look. _Grey’s Anatomy_ lied to me. Maybe I should’ve been a surgeon, I guess, but my hands shake too much.”

Gemma nods along, but her stomach does somersaults.

A few minutes later, they arrive in a sort of loading bay, where everything is gray. The paramedic opens up the back door, and there’s a woman standing there. Gemma panics, but Dr. Ruttenberg says, “It’s okay. We can trust her.”

Turns out she’s a mortician, and he enlisted her help to certify the death. “Less suspicious this way,” he explains.

While Eve’s out, the professionals take care of everything: they take pictures, sign documents, make it look like she was brutally murdered and cremated on the spot. Everything squared away, while Eve lies on a slab, doing an awfully convincing impression of a cadaver.

Ten minutes later, Eve begins to stir. She’s still moving slowly, shaking the sedative from he system, as she looks around the room and blinks. “How’d it go with Villanelle?”

“Um…” Gemma bites her lip.

“Where is she?” Eve commands. When no one immediately answers, Eve throws her legs over the edge of the slab, ready to run.

“Eve, no,” Gemma takes her by the shoulders, and the effects of the sedative must be lingering for how easily Gemma’s able to keep Eve in place. “After you went down, Ilya was coming for us. Villanelle saw. And she distracted him. Led him away.”

“She activated her squib?”

“No, she… she fired the blank in the air.”

“Then how’s she gonna fake her part? We have to go.”

Eve lunges again, but Gemma holds firm. “Villanelle knew what she was doing. She made a choice so that we could get away. If you go after her, you’ll make it so she did it for nothing. So _everything_ we’ve done is for nothing.”

“We can’t sit here waiting.”

“We have to.” Gemma loosens her grip, running her hand down Eve’s arm. “You know Villanelle. She’ll be alright. We should be more worried about Ilya.”

Eve is quiet, and distant. Gemma reaches into her purse and pulls out the stack of cash they parceled out earlier. She holds it out, but Dr. Ruttenberg shakes his head. “On the house.”

“Really?”

“This is probably the most exciting thing that’ll ever happen to me.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Though that doesn’t seem to be true for the two of you.” Gemma opens her mouth to correct him, about how she’s really in the same boat as him, swept up in someone else’s adventures, but Eve grabs her on the arm.

“We need to get back to the house,” Eve says. “That’s where she’ll look for us.”

“Yes. Doctor, can you help us get a car?”

“Calling a Lyft now.”

There aren’t words, so Gemma grabs the unsuspecting doctor and pulls him in for a hug. Though surprised, he accepts it. When she releases him, Eve also gives a curt thanks, and a handshake.

“For criminals, you guys are good people.” he laughs. “Hope you manage to avoid the real death.”

* * *

After a tense ride back, Eve helps Gemma from the car to the house. Hardly seems fair that she’s as fatigued as she is when she didn’t “die” an hour ago, but here they are.

They’ve barely crossed the threshold when Eve tries to leave again. Gemma grabs her by the wrist. “Where are you going?”

“You stay here – stay safe. I’m going to find Villanelle.”

“You know how mad she’d be if you get caught running after her?”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, I do. And I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you here. Don’t make a pregnant woman tackle you, because I will.”

“Gemma, please sit, you’re getting hysterical.”

“You did _not_ just use that word. Do you even know the history–” Gemma has an entire angry rant ready to come out, but stops. There’s a damp feeling, and a small splash.

“Gemma?”

“Eve,” Gemma says quietly, “I’m a bit terrified to look down, so I need you to tell me. Did my water just break?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy ravioli they're in it now!
> 
> let me know your thoughts in the comments or say hi on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xoxo
> 
> p.s. sorry this one took a while


	11. Chapter 11

Villanelle hates to jog. What a stupid way to stay in shape. Practical, but boring as fuck. A sucker’s exercise.

Villanelle loves to _run_. Feet pounding, chest heaving, limit of exertion, run-for-your life _run_. The type you can’t do on a treadmill.

With Ivan on her tail, Villanelle runs like she hasn’t in months. In years. Maybe ever. Usually she is predator, chasing down her prey. It’s an entirely new experience being prey herself, although Villanelle hardly feels vulnerable in this situation.

 _BANG._ A bullet whizzes over her shoulder, inches from her ear, near enough to blow some hairs out of place.

Nice for a reality check.

Running is perfectly fine, but on the off chance that Ivan spends more time on the treadmill than her, Villanelle needs another plan. Without slowing down, she lunges and pulls a poor passing man off of his electric scooter. In one smooth motion, she straddles the scooter and kicks it to life, peeling down the road.

After a few turns, she loosens up on the throttle, afraid she may have lost her pursuer for good. But mere seconds later, a roar behind her signals Ivan, now tailing her on a motorcycle he must’ve obtained by copying Villanelle’s move. She guns the motor again, holding tight to her small head start over his more powerful engine.

While Villanelle drives, she thinks. This was not the plan, to put it mildly. As Eve made her repeat so many times, she was supposed to go a small distance away, distracting Ivan while Eve was safely loaded into the ambulance, then shoot herself with the second blank in the gun, activate her squib, and put on a nice death scene for Ivan, which is a little difficult without the blank. But what else was she supposed to do get him away from them, when he wasn't even looking at her?

This would be much easier if she could kill him and be done with it. But if she kills Ivan, then he can’t report back to the Twelve that she’s dead. Even worse, if Ivan never comes back, they’ll send others to chase her. Bottom line, she needs a new plan. It shouldn’t be too hard, since Eve talked through thousands of possibilities in their arguments.

At least now Villanelle gets to improvise.

All at once, it comes to her. She banks a sharp turn on the scooter, rounding a corner, with a new destination in mind.

After dodging a few trucks and spooking a few pedestrians, she pulls out onto the Tower Bridge. Out in the center, she pulls over to the left, eliciting several honks and screeches of brakes as she crosses multiple lanes without warning. Villanelle leaps from the scooter and vaults over the railing onto the footpath. Seconds later, more screeches and cursing as Ivan again mimics her, ditching his motorcycle in the middle of the road to hold his gun on her.

By this point, Villanelle has climbed up onto the railing that keeps random walkers from falling into the river. She clutches a nearby strut for support as she balances on the narrow beam. “Hello, Ivan, good to see you!”

“Ilya,” he grunts. He fires a shot, which Villanelle ducks, laughing.

“You are as bad a shot as I remember,” she crows. “No hard feelings though. I think you and I want the same thing.”

“You are going to suffer for this,” Ilya says. “You think they were angry before? You know nothing.”

“Ooh, scary,” Villanelle says. “But don’t waste any more bullets. This is the end for me. There’s no life worth living without her.”

Without _them_ , she amends in her head. But Ilya isn’t interested in Villanelle’s emotional revelations; he’s tensing his trigger finger.

Villanelle releases her hand. As soon as her fingers come free from the steel strut and her weight falls backwards, she considers that she has no particular plan for how to survive this fall. Before she can worry much, there’s another _BANG_ as Ilya disregards her one instruction and fires a shot anyway. She can’t exactly dodge, firmly in gravity’s hands at this point, and a sharp pain in her arm tells her she didn’t escape unscathed.

The fall is both longer and shorter than she expects. She has enough time to think, _Hm, this is taking a bit–_

_SMACK._

The impact of her back flat against the water nearly knocks the wind out of her, but Villanelle does her best to keep her air inside, knowing it won’t be a comfortable experience even with full lungs. Then, she plunges under the surface.

As momentum carries her down, she fumbles with the squib packet attached to her chest. She’s about to unstrap it when she realizes she can’t risk it floating up above her and giving the whole thing away. Instead, she rips the seal around the tube attached to the main pack, causing plume of red liquid to diffuse through the water. It mingles with the small trail of real blood from her arm, creating the impression of a much more impressive wound as the red cloud spirals up towards the surface of the water. This should convince him, Villanelle thinks, as the cloud gets larger, and dimmer.

_Crap._

Villanelle has to stay down, but not too far down. She can’t risk going up for air too soon, if she’s still in sight of Ivan, but she also can’t sink so low that she won’t be able to recover. Though cold seeps into her muscles, threatening to numb her, she kicks and strokes, trying to convert her momentum to swim with the current rather than further down. Though, come to think of it, it’s hard to be certain which way is down. Villanelle blows out some air from her nose and notes which way the bubbles go. She follows them, a little closer to the surface. But not too close.

The water’s colder by the minute, and Villanelle starts to lose feeling in her fingers and toes. And also her arms. And thighs. The one upside of the cold is it dulls the pain from the bullet wound. Villanelle thinks she’s still swimming forward, but it’s impossible to tell if she’s actually moving or not. She can’t see, can’t feel. She might be losing consciousness at this very moment.

What is it they say about drowning? That there’s supposed to be a sudden sense of peace right before it all ends? Villanelle considers whether she feels at peace enough to be in genuine proximity of death. Though perhaps that test won’t be accurate for her since she’s not particularly scared of dying.

Come to think of it, dying would tie things up nicely. If she dies here, it will sell the act better. Bring less question to Eve’s death, too.

But Eve can’t be trusted on her own. She’ll do something stupid like come after Villanelle’s body. Gemma doesn’t have the guts to stop her. Eve and Gemma… can the two of them learn to take care of each other?

No. Villanelle can’t give in when she has two soulmates at home, waiting for her. Two soulmates who _need_ her.

The last bit of air Villanelle was holding inside escapes her mouth, and a bit of water flows in to replace it. She doesn’t even have the strength to choke on it as the last of her oxygen flows up, up, up in bubbles.

No air left to breathe, to speak. In the hazy darkness, Villanelle’s last words roll through her mind. _I thought you were special._ She can’t let that be the last thing she said to Eve. Not again.

If she hasn’t floated far enough now, she’s screwed anyway. Villanelle kicks her legs, or at least she thinks she does. With every scrap of strength left inside her, she fights against the water. Following the bubbles.

A few agonizing seconds. She flails all of her limbs against the current. The water doesn’t end.

Until it does.

The November air is like a slap in the face. Villanelle coughs, spitting up dirty water, gasping for breath. She doesn’t have enough energy to even tread water, so she flips onto her back, floating while she gulps in air. The current guides her while she floats on her back. Spots of light dot across her vision; maybe lights of the city, maybe a symptom of hypoxia.

 _Kick,_ she tells her legs. _Stroke_ , she commands her arms. None obey. All Villanelle can do is float with the current and breathe in air so cold it’s like slush poured into her lungs. All she can do is stare at the night sky, hoping no one will see her, hoping the water won’t drag her under, for she can’t fight at this point.

Maybe a minute or maybe an hour later, something solid takes her out of her trance. Villanelle coughs and rolls over onto ground. _Ground_. She blinks, and looks down at the sand underneath her hands. She’s on a small beach, if it can be called that – a tiny stretch of gravelly shore a few hundred meters long, dotted with refuse, separated from the street above by a steep concrete wall.

Pure survival instinct takes over, for consciously, Villanelle couldn’t recite the directions back to Gemma’s from wherever she washed up, but some primal compass in her brain helps her drag herself in the right direction, even as she keeps to alleys and cut-throughs. She attracts some stares, all right, but as long as they aren’t Ilya’s, it doesn’t matter.

By the time she falls on Gemma’s doorstep, she’s ready to collapse. She rings the doorbell. Nothing. Rings again. Nothing. A sick echo of the first time she arrived on this stoop, two months ago. Ringing and waiting, so impatient then. Also coming from the bridge. But she wasn’t alone. She had Eve. She thought she was in a tough spot then, but she had nothing to lose, not compared to now.

Finally, as she’s raising her finger to lay on the bell for a third time, Eve opens the door. Words fall out of Villanelle’s mouth, but she’s not sure what they are, blending with Eve talking over her. Though her numb lips don’t cooperate, what Villanelle tries to say is: _of course you’re special, you idiot, you maniac, you beautiful disaster_. But all that comes out is a desperate, mushy vocalization, as she collapses into Eve’s arms.

When Villanelle pulls her eyelids open next, she’s on a chair in the living room. Eve is rushing towards her, with a towel. “Here. Dry yourself off, and– shit, you’re bleeding.”

Right, that’s what all the red is streaming down her arm. Villanelle takes the towel, but doesn’t fully process what to do with it. Eve’s already retreated into the other room.

“Where can I find bandages?” Eve calls out.

“Are you insane? She has to get to a hospital!”

Villanelle slowly turns her head in the direction of the voice to see Gemma sitting on the couch. Legs spread wide, clutching her stomach, face twisted in a mixture of pain and panic.

Seems Villanelle has a little bit to catch up on.

Before she can form even the beginning of a question, Eve’s back upon her with a clean rag, which she presses against the gash on Villanelle’s bicep. Eve snaps her head towards Gemma. “We have to get _you_ to the hospital.”

“None of us can go to the hospital,” Villanelle mutters. Though her eyelids are still heavy, she can feel both Eve and Gemma’s gazes fall upon her. She takes in a deep breath of the warm house air, and continues. “Eve and I just died. Are we going to throw that all away right now by checking in on public record?”

“Exactly,” Eve says. “I can look after you here, and call a car for Gemma–”

“No!” Gemma pleads. “Don’t send me off alone.”

“We can’t go with you,” Eve says.

“I don’t care. I won’t go alone. I want you two with me. Here.”

“It’s not safe.”

“Don’t argue with a woman in labor!” Gemma screeches.

Neither Eve nor Villanelle is in any position to force her, so that’s that.

Though panicked, Gemma waits at Eve’s instruction, timing the breaks between contractions, while Eve ushers Villanelle upstairs. She turns the shower on full blast, maximum heat.

“I thought you told me to dry off,” Villanelle rasps.

Eve merely rolls her eyes and helps Villanelle strip off her wet clothes. “What happened?”

“I got my way.”

“No, really.”

“I went to the bridge.”

“Guess it’s fitting.” But Eve can’t help being Eve. “Did you get it done? I mean, did he see? Did he buy it?”

“I think it was convincing,” Villanelle says, teeth chattering as she stands naked. “At least from where I was sitting.”

Eve sticks a hand into the shower to make sure it’s warm, then, ushers Villanelle inside.

* * *

Once she’s no longer in danger of dying from hypothermia, Villanelle’s able to focus on the pain in her arm. Only a graze, which is lucky, she supposes, but still large enough to be dangerous if not tended to. She pinches the open gash on her bicep between her fingers. “It needs stitches.”

After several seconds, Eve finally looks up from the article on her phone about the early stages of labor. “Why are you looking at me?”

“I don’t exactly feel comfortable asking Gemma right now.”

At the sound of her name, Gemma comes down from a groan of pain, and hits the stopwatch on her phone, starting the timer to the next contraction. “Sewing kit,” she pants. “Top right drawer of my bureau. Alcohol and gauze… bathroom cabinet.”

Villanelle looks at Eve expectantly. “Chop chop.”

Eve mutters something under her breath, but runs to get the supplies. Villanelle moves onto the couch, next to Gemma, and grabs her hand. “Next one, squeeze my hand when it hurts,” she says, with a smile. Someone said that in a movie once, and whether or not it’s true, it makes Gemma look a little less afraid.

A minute later, Eve returns with the necessary supplies. “I so did not sign up for this,” she groans, threading the needle.

“It’s okay,” Villanelle says. “Even if you do a shit job, it’ll match my other one.” She nods to the scar on her opposite bicep, a short jagged line, poorly stitched by Dasha.

“Do I just… go for it?”

“Do it.” Villanelle bites the inside of her cheek as the needle threads through her skin. She almost wishes they did this step while she was still frozen numb, but it’s not so bad. She’s endured far worse.

A couple stitches in, Gemma starts to squeak. “Another one?” Villanelle asks.

Gemma nods, and squeezes Villanelle’s hand. Hard. Villanelle can’t help but cry out in a mixture of pain and surprise.

“Sorry,” Eve exclaims, and stops stitching.

“No, that’s fine,” Villanelle says, then gasps as Gemma crunches her hand tighter. “That bad?””

Gemma squeezes even harder. “You have no idea.”

Villanelle struggles to keep a stoic face. She had no idea Gemma was that strong.

“Listen Gemma,” she manages. “Maybe this hand thing was the wrong idea. But I heard cursing is scientifically proven to reduce pain.”

“That’s impossible,” Gemma manages through gritted teeth.

“Try it,” Villanelle pleads.

“No, I––– BLOODY HELL!” Gemma shouts. “ _FUCK, SHIT, COCKSUCKER, ARSE_!”

“There,” Eve says. “All stitched up.”

“Thanks, Eve,” Villanelle says, hollow. “Do you know how to fix a broken hand?”

* * *

Villanelle takes over timing responsibilities in exchange for not getting her hand broken.

When Gemma starts to wince, she stops the stopwatch. “Two minutes, seventeen seconds,” she says to Eve.

“Shit,” Eve says.

“What’s ‘shit’?” Gemma pleads, as her face contorts in pain.

“Listen, Gemma,” Eve comes in front of her and squats down to level with her. “We can call a car right now, and still get you–”

“No,” Gemma says. “Please. I can’t go out there alone.”

Eve looks pleadingly at Villanelle. “Tell her. She won’t listen to me.”

“Women used to give birth in fields or caves,” Villanelle shrugs.

So as soon as the contraction passes, they help Gemma up the stairs. They set up in the guest room, retrieving plenty of extra towels and blankets from the linen closet.

“Give me the phone,” Eve commands, and she begins typing furiously. Villanelle peers over her shoulder to see wikiHow: _How to Deliver a Baby_.

“Eve.”

“Do you have any better suggestions, Doctor?” Eve snaps. Then, she skims through the article quickly.

Villanelle steps away from her, towards Gemma, strangely less touchy at this moment. “How are you doing?” she asks, as Gemma’s propped up against a heaping pile of pillows.

“Not amazing.”

“Tell me about it,” Villanelle sighs. “I’m exhausted. How long do you think this is going to take? I’m starving, too.”

Eve comes back in the room before Gemma can respond to that. “Okay,” Eve sighs. “I guess we are doing this.” She takes a deep breath, and stands at the end of the bed. “Are you okay, if I, um…” Gemma nods, and Eve takes a look. She pulls her head up a second later. “I don’t have a tape measure, but um, you look pretty dilated to me. I think this train is leaving the station.”

Villanelle edges next to Eve. “I want to help.”

But one look is enough.

“Where are you going?” Eve calls after her as she heads for the door.

“That is not how I like to see vaginas.”

“You cut people up for fun, but _this_ you can’t stomach?”

“I can’t help my body’s natural reactions!”

Eve sighs. “If you want to be useful, find some string, and a very clean pair of scissors.”

As Villanelle goes, she hears Gemma asking: “What are the scissors for? Eve? _What are the scissors for?_ ”

* * *

“That’s not what I asked for.”

“It’s plenty sharp,” Villanelle assures Eve. “Don’t worry, I sterilized it over the stove.”

“What is the _knife_ for?” Gemma screeches.

“Shhh,” Eve says. “Don’t worry. All you need to do right now is breathe. You take any lamaze classes?”

“No,” Gemma whimpers.

“Of course not. It would be too easy if _one_ of us were prepared,” Eve mutters. “Breathe deep, I guess. And get ready to push.”

It takes a long time.

While Gemma screams, Villanelle thinks back to when she was young and her father brought home a few eggs. He kept them in a special case under a powerful lamp until one day the eggs started shaking and then little baby chicks started to peck their way out. She imagines the baby inside fighting its way free from Gemma, cracking her like an eggshell.

Villanelle blinks back to reality. No creature bursting out of her stomach, but Gemma’s screaming bloody murder all the same. If that baby is hurting her so, Villanelle would like a word with it when it comes out.

After all the ramp-up with the contractions, Villanelle kind of figured once Gemma spread her legs in the bed it’d be five, maybe ten minutes of pushing and done. Instead, hours tick by, with both Gemma and Eve growing visibly more frustrated.

Villanelle tries to be helpful. She returns every so often with a glass of water. Eve snatches it from her hands.

“That was meant for Gemma.”

Eve finishes chugging and hands the glass back to Villanelle. “When you get hers, bring me a refill, too.”

Always grateful, Eve.

Villanelle knows better than to offer her hand to Gemma again, so instead she rubs Gemma’s shoulders in a reassuring way. “You can handle it, Gemma. It can’t hurt _that_ bad.”

Eve glares at her. “If you’re not gonna be helpful, you can just go.”

Villanelle swallows. She doesn’t want to be banished from the room, so she tries again. “Women used to give birth in the middle of fields and then walk it off and hunt a gazelle for dinner.”

Gemma’s response is hard to make out, through her screams, but it sounds like, “ _I will kill you_.”

Eve opens her mouth, ready to chastise her, but then looks back down at her work. “On second thought, Villanelle, keep being annoying. Gemma, put all your anger into pushing.”

It’s slow going. At times, Villanelle wonders if they’re even making any progress. So she asks Gemma if she is really trying at all. That earns a few more curses and a thumbs up from Eve. More and more minutes tick by.

Then, all at once, Gemma’s cries wane, and a new sound emerges. Villanelle chances a look, and Eve’s got a tiny, slime-covered thing in her hands. And the thing is making quite a lot of noise for something so small.

“You did it,” Eve breathes, turning the little nugget over in her hands. “Vill, can you give me a hand?”

At Eve’s instruction, Villanelle grabs the string and helps Eve tie it off in two places so they can safely cut the cord. The little thing screams and screams. Awfully rude to make such a fuss after it already made the whole night about itself.

“Hold on,” Eve says. “I need to make sure all the fluids are drained. Vill, grab my phone and pull up the Youtube video in the second tab.”

Villanelle blinks and obeys while Eve squints at the picture on the phone and then tilts the little nugget backwards for a few seconds. The cries pause, and then kick up again.

“Blanket,” Eve says, and Villanelle hands her the clean cotton quilt they retrieved from the linen closet. Eve wraps the critter like a burrito, and then walks around the side of the bed, gently lowering it onto Gemma’s chest.

“Here she is,” Eve says.

Gemma can’t say a word; all that comes out is a sort of nervous laugh, as she holds the baby to her chest. “You picked a really terrible time,” she says. In response, the baby cries more and wriggles up against her skin.

“It’s so small,” Villanelle says. “And red. Why is it all red?”

“That’s normal,” Eve says quickly.

“If she’s normal, she won’t fit in here,” Gemma murmurs.

As the little thing nuzzles its head against Gemma’s chest, and curls its tiny fingers, Villanelle scrunches up her mouth. “I guess I can settle my beef with you another day, baby.”

Both Gemma and Eve look at Villanelle in concern, but not for long. They can’t keep their eyes off _her_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obligatory disclaimer: I am not a doctor, nor have I ever given birth. All content in this chapter was based on birth scenes in movies and TV plus a few google searches. I am aware it's not accurate; it's played up for drama. Also, please don't try this at home... seek qualified medical assistance to deliver a baby if at all possible.
> 
> okay, okay, now that that's done, let me know what you think in the comments
> 
> Or hang with me on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) xo


	12. Chapter 12

A year ago, Eve had never witnessed death.

Her father passed in his sleep; Eve found out in the morning. She wasn’t around when any of her grandparents went, either.

The first time she witnessed life going out of the world was almost exactly a year ago. She burst into the hospital room to find three victims already gone, and Kasia, against all odds, still gasping for life. Eve pressed her hands around Kasia’s neck, trying in vain to stop the bleeding, and felt the last drops of life pour between her fingers. She saw the light leave Kasia’s eyes. She heard the last breath choke out of her windpipe. She felt the last heartbeat sputter a weak trickle of blood from her gaping wounds.

Since then, Eve’s had too many other experiences to compare and contrast. Bill succumbed to a dozen stab wounds in her arms in a crowded nightclub. Niko failed to take in enough oxygen as he bled from the neck, while Eve attempted to keep him going long enough for an ambulance to reach a farm in rural Poland. At least Kenny was dead when he hit the ground.

The past twelve months, Eve has become somewhat of an expert in witnessing death. Not causing; not usually. She’s a novice in that regard, and doesn’t care to change it. But witnessing she can do. Failing to stop. Watching powerlessly while people are stripped from the world.

Until today, Eve had never witnessed life.

The terror is almost equal, to when she held her hands over Kasia’s throat, but the aftermath is indescribable. A living, healthy, real, person, coming into the world in Eve’s hands.

Not what she signed up for. But perhaps what she needed.

* * *

The guest room is an absolute mess, which certainly won’t be cleaned until the morning, so for the time being they nestle together in Gemma’s bed. Eve and Villanelle flank the two sides, peering closely at the baby perched on Gemma’s breast.

“She looks like a potato,” Villanelle says. “Like Niko.” Then, in a flash of self-awareness, she mumbles “sorry,” suddenly remembering she’s in the presence of two women who mourned Niko.

Eve shakes her head and lets out a chuckle. “You’re not wrong.”

Gemma laughs too, though it’s a weak laugh, tamped down by exhaustion.

“I don’t mean it as a bad thing,” Villanelle adds. “The shape of her head–”

“We get it,” Eve says, then, looking at Gemma, adds, “She has your eyes.” When they blink open, for brief seconds, they’re big, and round, and deep brown – just like Gemma’s.

“What will you call her?” Villanelle asks.

Gemma’s brows knit together. “I don’t know.”

“Choose wisely,” Villanelle says, in a deep voice. “Names have power.”

Eve can’t help but roll her eyes at that.

“I haven’t got any ideas,” Gemma says.

“Tsumi,” Villanelle suggests. “Or Antonia.”

“I’m not sure…”

“How about Идиот?”

“That’s kind of pretty,” Gemma says, but Eve simply shakes her head and kicks Villanelle in the leg – it’s not worth explaining.

Gemma runs a hand softly over the baby’s back. “I wonder what he…” Then trails off.

Eve takes a deep breath. “Niko said, if we… if he had a daughter, we’d have to call her Ozella, after his grandmother.”

“That’s nice.” Gemma forces a smile.

“Relax. Even Niko couldn’t pretend with that one,” Eve says. “Had to tell his mother that, but when she was gone… He said he liked the name Rachel.”

Gemma’s face lights up for a second before she dampens it. “If that name was his, and yours, I don’t want–”

“I literally could not care less,” Eve interrupts. “I think he’d like it. If _you_ like it.”

“It’s beautiful.” Gemma strokes the tiny shoulder in front of her. “Rachel.”

On her other side, Villanelle shifts and props herself up on her arm. “You know, in Russia, they put the father’s name as part of the child’s name.”

Gemma nods. “When reading Tolstoy and Chekhov, I always thought the names were so wonderful. So you are–”

“Oksana Anatolyevna,” Eve supplies.

“That’s what it says on my death certificate.” Villanelle’s jaw tightens. A moment of quiet. Maybe Eve shouldn’t have said anything. But then Villanelle continues, “I don’t care for it much, but, something of the sort could be useful here.”

“For a middle name, yes. Rachel Niko-evna…” Gemma scrunches her face up. “No, that’s silly. Maybe Nicola?”

Eve suppresses the urge to laugh. She smiles instead. “Perfect.”

“Rachel Nicola Pierson,” Villanelle says, experimenting, then she nods.

“Rachel,” Gemma repeats softly.

* * *

After more wheedling, Gemma promises she’ll go to the doctor first thing tomorrow to get Rachel (and herself) properly checked out, but now, she only wants to rest. Neither Eve nor Villanelle care to argue with someone who just went through several hours of labor, so that’s the end of it.

While Gemma goes to clean herself up a bit in the bathroom, Eve handles the baby. She’s a little fussy, after having some trouble feeding. Eve bounces her up and down gently, the way she’s seen other parents do. She takes no joy in it, but she’s gotta try to get this kid to sleep somehow, in the hope that they can get a few minutes of sleep themselves.

“Eve?”

“Yeah?”

“That was pretty cool, how you pulled that baby out of her.”

“I didn’t pull,” Eve says. “Just nature doing its thing.”

“Nature’s nothing next to Eve Polastri.” Villanelle scoots onto the corner of the bed closest to Eve, with an impish grin. “Can I hold it?” Her face is hopeful at first, then, noting Eve’s hesitation, it falls.

“Sorry,” Eve replies. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Don’t act so shocked. I’ve held babies before.”

“Okay, okay.” Eve lowers herself onto the bed next to Villanelle, then gingerly transfers Rachel into her grasp. “Careful. Support her head.”

“I know,” Villanelle snaps. She takes the swaddled little package and holds it against her torso. “Hello, Rachel Nicola,” she coos softly. “You are very small and defenseless. In light of this, I will wait until you are able to keep your eyes open to address how much you hurt Gemma.”

“Jesus, you’re seriously gonna hold a grudge against an infant?”

“I’d do the same for you.” Though her hands are occupied, Villanelle elbows Eve in a vaguely affectionate way.

They sit and watch for a few minutes, the only sounds of Rachel’s fussing and the shower running in the other room.

“You never wanted one?”

“No,” Eve replies. “You?”

“I don’t know.”

Fair enough. Whatever else she is, Villanelle is young. But Eve knew, even back when she was Villanelle’s age. All it took was her parents’ divorce for her to know she never wanted to deal with a child through that process – let alone the far greater drama her life has since turned into.

“Can someone come help?” Gemma’s voice comes tentatively through the wall.

“Got it,” Villanelle grunts. She leans over and transfers the baby back into Eve’s arms. As she goes, she stops in the doorway for a minute, looking back at Eve.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Villanelle smiles and goes.

Before Eve can wonder about that, Rachel’s cries resume, and Eve tries bouncing again because, why not? Anything to get this kid quiet.

To her surprise, thirty seconds or so later, the crying eases.

“Hey,” Eve breathes. “That wasn’t so hard.” Quiet, though, so as not to set her off again.

Much as Eve has never, _ever_ wanted the weight of a child’s quality of life on her head, she has to admit: there’s something hard-coded in her DNA that makes it impossible to ignore how stupid-cute they are, even when they’re fresh-baked and bald and ugly. She can’t help but reach out and touch that itty-bitty hand–

And then, Rachel grabs Eve’s finger. Wraps it in her tiny baby hand, with a grip that’s surprisingly tight for how fragile her fingers look.

This tiny human can’t survive without bigger humans caring for it. Eve thinks of all the people she was supposed to protect, that she couldn’t. All the people she has watched die, leave the world. She held Kasia, Bill, Niko as they died, and now she caught this baby as she came into the world. And she swears that even if she failed before, she won’t now. Not for this person she saw come into the world, perfectly innocent.

So Eve says it: _you are innocent_. Not out loud, not with words. She says it as she cradles her in her arms. _You deserve to be safe_. She says it as she swaddles her tightly in a blanket. _I failed to protect a lot of people. But no more. I will protect you, or die trying_.

She never shares this with anyone. It’s between her and Rachel.

Eventually, Gemma and Villanelle return, and they get into bed. Eve on one side, Villanelle on the other, Gemma cradling Rachel in the middle.

Against all odds, they get a good night’s sleep.

* * *

**TWO MONTHS LATER**

* * *

“Come quick!”

Eve locks eyes with Gemma, noting the alarm in Villanelle’s voice, and they run upstairs. They enter the nursery, (formerly the guest room) to find Villanelle standing next to the crib, where Rachel is lying on her back.

“What’s wrong?” Gemma pants.

Villanelle faces them, placid. “She smiled.”

“What?” Eve snaps. “You screamed for that?”

“I made a face and she smiled,” Villanelle says. “It’s a first.”

“I can’t believe I missed it,” Gemma sighs.

“Let me do it again.” Villanelle leans over the edge of the crib, crosses her eyes and puffs out her cheeks.

Villanelle spends several minutes contorting her face in various ways to no avail. Eve’s about to give up and leave, when Villanelle cries out. “Look!”

All three of them fight their way to look over the edge of the crib, for it’s true. There she is, smiling. Fuck if that perfect little face isn’t enough to make Eve’s ovaries ache for a split second, but her momentary softness is overshadowed by Gemma bursting into tears. Villanelle gets a camera and takes several photos to mark the occasion, including several of Gemma’s reaction, despite her protests that _“this isn’t about me!”_

The days pass surprisingly quickly, blending into one. Eve and Villanelle are on lockdown by necessity, waiting for dust to clear after their stunt, while Gemma’s still on parental leave. None of them has any obligation in the world besides passing the days together, and watching the tiny, helpless baby in the crib grow minutely less tiny and less helpless by the day. The smile is indeed a big milestone, for Rachel hasn’t done much besides eat, shit, and cry for the past two months. But all the books assure Eve that’s perfectly normal. (She needs to do something to pass the hours, and Gemma’s got baby books lying everywhere, so Eve’s picked up a few things.)

Most of the time, they’ll spend the whole day together, which is pleasant, but also makes it difficult to have a private moment when required.

Eve seizes onto a rare opportunity when Gemma is in the shower and Rachel’s down for a nap to pull Villanelle aside. “We need to talk.”

“Already?” Villanelle replies.

“It’s been two months,” Eve says. “This is way longer than we planned. Every day we stay is a bigger risk.”

Villanelle pouts. Eve knows she wants to argue, but they’ve fought this fight enough times, in pieces, when Gemma’s at the store, or in whispers, when Gemma’s vacuuming the other room. In the end, Villanelle won’t fight further because she knows it’s the truth. There’s only one right thing to do, and it’s past time.

“Tomorrow?” Villanelle asks.

“Tomorrow.”

* * *

They gather in the kitchen, Villanelle and Eve sat side by side at one end of the table, Rachel in Gemma’s arms at the other. They decide the news is best delivered with cupcakes, although Gemma’s the one that made them. Still, she notes the degree of formality when Villanelle plates the cupcakes nicely and Eve brews tea for all of them.

“What’s going on?” she asks, eyeing the display suspiciously.

Villanelle pushes Gemma’s tea closer and unwraps a cupcake, popping it down in front of her.

Eve clears her throat. “You knew this was coming.”

“No,” Gemma says, eyes widening. “Not yet. It’s so soon.”

“It’s time,” Eve says. “Well, really it was time two months ago, but, bottom line is. We can’t stay forever.”

Gemma nods, and keeps her gaze focused down on her tea.

“Don’t you have anything to say to that?” Villanelle asks.

At that moment, Rachel begins to whine as if the question was directed at her. Gemma straightens her up, cradling her close and patting her on the back to burp her. “There isn’t much to say,” she says, tapping rhythmically. “It makes sense.”

“You’re not upset?” Villanelle says, oddly disappointed.

“It’d be selfish of me to expect you to stay any longer. Not to mention foolish. If they figure out you’re still alive, and they come looking here, it’d put Rachel in danger.” Rachel burps, as if in agreement.

“Actually–”

Eve kicks Villanelle under the table to shut her up. They can’t go ahead and ask Gemma after that. It’s unfair to force her to be the one to say no, when they all know the alternative would put both Gemma and Rachel in danger.

But Villanelle looks at Eve, and grabs Eve’s hand, resting on her knee, and squeezes it. The look in her eyes says, _We’ve done crazier things before, to stay together._

Rather than picking apart this silent tension, Gemma’s more preoccupied with cleaning up the dribble from the baby’s face. Luckily, there’s usually a rag in reach from any part of the house, these days), and swipes it across Rachel’s cheek. “Can I ask one thing?” Gemma says while she works. “Are you allowed to tell me where you are going? Even a general hint.”

“Canada,” Villanelle says.

“Oh good. That seems a nice place to live,” Gemma says quietly. “And suitably large. Even if they come and torture that out of me, they’ll have a lot of country to search.”

“Exactly!” Villanelle adds, a bit too gleefully, earning herself another kick.

“Gemma,” Eve says, steeling herself. It’s not fair to deprive her of the opportunity, either. It has to be Gemma’s choice. “There’s something we have to ask you. There’s no right answer to this. Either answer is completely understandable, okay?”

Gemma nods tentatively, bouncing Rachel lightly in her arms.

“We’re running because we have to,” Eve says. “We’re dead, and we have to stay hidden. But there’s no reason a private citizen can’t move to Canada of her own accord.”

Gemma freezes as she comprehends the proposition.

“But it’s up to you,” Eve adds quickly. “You have a life, and a child to look after, so if you need to stay…”

“I don’t want to say goodbye to you two,” Gemma says quietly.

Eve inhales sharply, trying to find the strength to affirm Gemma’s decision.

“So I won’t.”

Villanelle lets out a sound of joy and fist-pumps. “I told you,” she sneers at Eve.

Eve, meanwhile, rubs her temples. As if allowing Gemma a reasonable choice was some sort of competition between assuredness and realism.

“How does this… I mean, there are a lot of details I have to– In order to not attract suspicion. Although I’m not dead, still– And Rachel–”

“Don’t worry,” Villanelle says. “I’ve taken care of it.” She reaches into her pocket, and produces a few thin blue books with gold seals. “One for me. One for Eve. And…” She hands the other two to Gemma.

“What’s this?”

“Congrats,” Villanelle says. “We are all Canadian citizens.”

Eve is dumbstruck – Villanelle hadn’t told her about it. “When did you–”

“When I visited my friend.”

Gemma opens the books, examining the pictures inside. “How?”

“I swiped a picture from one of your photo albums, and my friend edited it for these purposes,” Villanelle explains. “And I have no idea who that baby is. But all babies look the same.”

“How’d you know,” Eve says quietly. That Villanelle had thought ahead this much… before it was all sorted out.

Villanelle shrugs. “I had a feeling.”

* * *

Packing is a group effort.

Really, Eve and Villanelle hold up objects one at a time and ask Gemma if they go in the _KEEP_ box (limited capacity, given the circumstances), the _DONATE_ box, or the bin. The TV is on in the background, and a bumper ad comes on for a reality program about soulmates.

“Want me to turn the volume up, Gemma?” Villanelle teases.

“No,” Gemma replies, elbowing Villanelle. Then mutters, “I’ve already seen this one.”

Villanelle threads her arms around Gemma’s hips and tugs her close for a kiss. Then, Gemma pulls away, subtly directing Villanelle to how Eve is hanging back, uncomfortable.

Before they can murmur any half-hearted apology, Eve throws her hands up. “Don’t stop on my account. Gotta get over it sometime.”

Eve recalls how odd it felt when she and Villanelle first officially confirmed their connection. Of course, that was also exacerbated by the whole _we’ve-nearly-killed-each-other_ situation, though it’s not like Eve’s history with Gemma is much less fraught. Three of them, that’s brand new territory for all involved.

“There’s no denying it’s strange,” Gemma says. “We don’t need to rush anything.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Villanelle says quickly, wiggling her eyebrows. “Through experimentation.”

Eve can’t help but snort at that, then her cheeks warm when she realizes that’s exactly what Villanelle wanted.

“Do you think there are others?” Eve says. “With two?”

“I’ve never heard of it,” Gemma says.

“If _you_ haven’t heard of it, it’s unheard of.” Villanelle pokes at her teasingly.

“An anomaly within a rarity…” Gemma trails off, considering the orders of magnitude.

“We’re really special,” Villanelle says, smug. “They could make one of those reality specials you love about us.”

“Don’t get any ideas.” Eve sneaks behind Villanelle and squeezes her around the waist. As the two of them sway, entwined, they end up leaning into Gemma, all sharing space in a way they’ve hardly done in their waking hours. As soon as Eve becomes conscious of this, it makes her feel weird and prickly, so she moves away.

“Too bad we have to pack up the nursery,” Villanelle says, pushing away from the odd moment. “Right after we got it set up.”

“And all those diapers in the closet,” Eve adds.

Gemma opens her mouth, but then shakes her head.

“What is it?” Villanelle prompts.

“I’ve lived in this house for fifteen years,” Gemma explains. “Before that, I came here all the time, to visit my grandmother. Leaving it behind, it feels like losing another piece of her.”

Eve finds that she is also surprisingly reluctant to leave this house, that at first she resented so much. She resented that Niko came here to flee from her; she resented that it was the only shelter she and Villanelle had; she resented that she was trapped here. Against all odds, this house turned into a place of surprisingly fond memories. Besides that, a small part of Eve questions whether will the three of them will be able to coexist anywhere outside these four walls.

“You can still change your mind,” Eve says.

“Say the word and we’ll take everything out of the boxes,” Villanelle adds.

But then Gemma takes her hand. Villanelle puts an arm around both of them, pulling them together, and resting her chin against Eve’s head. “I can’t, actually,” Gemma sighs.

Maybe it’ll work.

* * *

When it’s time to leave, they take separate flights, for it’s too risky to travel together.

Eve goes first. She is responsible for taking Pompom.

Gemma brings Rachel, of course.

Much to her chagrin, Villanelle is in charge of an extra carry-on with the remaining cases of diapers, because Eve and Gemma agree, it would be nuts to let them go to waste.

Gemma found a lead on a teaching position at a local school, which will be nice when she is ready to work again in a few months. They found a house in a small town a ways outside of Toronto. It’s not terribly large, in a one-level ranch layout, but there are three bedrooms, and a spacious yard. Space-wise, it’s incredible how much the sale of the small house in London was able to translate into out here.

Gemma arrives four days after Eve. The house isn’t fully outfitted yet, as Eve assures Gemma, while she pokes through the empty rooms, but Gemma smiles and says, “We’ll make it work.”

She and Eve spend the rest of the day setting up the nursery, because it’s most important. Second priority is a bed for them, since Eve spent the first few days sleeping on an air mattress rather than deal with that. They next day, they obtain a queen size bed and sheets, though it still needs finer fittings. (Eve manages to convince Gemma that throw pillows can be obtained after other things like tables, chairs, television, et cetera).

Villanelle is due to arrive on the evening of the third day.

While they wait, Eve sits on the edge of the porch, looking out at the woods behind the house. The last time she had a house with a yard like this, that looked out onto actual green space, was when she lived with her dad in Connecticut. Over twenty years ago. She didn’t know how badly she missed it until now. Various chattering and chirping fills the air as squirrels and birds go about their business. It’s a nice reminder that no matter how much the human race fucks up, no matter how much Eve herself fucks up, it’s just another day for the squirrels.

The sound of the screen door signals Gemma’s. She comes and sits next to Eve on the edge of the porch, plopping a baby monitor next to her. “Just got her to sleep.”

“Means you’ve got maybe ten minutes, so enjoy them.”

Gemma smiles and pulls her coat tighter around her, teeth chattering. Canada in January is rather cold, but the air is still clear and refreshing. Gemma reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out a packet of cigarettes.

“Don’t judge me,” she says. “I know you’re not supposed to smoke while breastfeeding, technically, that’s what the articles say, but, it’s been eleven months and god, I just want one.”

Eve throws her hands up in surrender. “I was only gonna ask if I can have one too.”

Gemma hands Eve a cigarette and lights it for her. Then lights her own and takes a long drag. “Oh, it’s been too long.”

“Same.”

Gemma sighs almost orgasmically. “God, that’s good.”

For a minute or so, they just smoke and watch the woods. It’s a sign of how far they’ve come, that they can sit here in comfortable silence.

“This reminds me of when I first met Villanelle,” Gemma says.

“What do you mean?”

“She asked me for a cig.”

“Sure it was Villanelle?” Eve laughs. “She hates smoking. Enjoy it now, ‘cause if she ever catches you you’ll get an earful.”

“This’ll be our secret then.” Gemma pauses. “There was a lot I didn’t know back then.”

“I could say the same.” Eve looks down at her left hand, twisting the ring on her fourth finger. How much has changed since that night, indeed. Back then, she thought she and Niko might be relighting their spark, continuing their journey together, but it was the beginning of a different journey entirely. “I’m a widow,” she says, testing the word out loud.

“I’m a whore,” Gemma adds, a bitter edge Eve’s never heard from her before. “A widow, a whore, and a killer walk into a house in Canada…” With the sarcastic grin tucking into her cheek as she flicks away a bit of ash, Eve considers how she and Gemma might have become friends in another life, if they’d met under different circumstances. Friends, perhaps, but nothing more.

“Do you regret anything?” Gemma asks suddenly.

“Bold for _you_ to be asking _me_ that.”

“I don’t mean as me-mistress asking you-widow. I mean as two women who’ve lived a few more years than we may care to tally up.”

“Then you know that’s an unfair fucking question.”

“‘Course it is. I still want to know.”

“Sure. I regret every single thing I’ve ever done. But also if I had a second chance I’d do it all over again. Not because I love my choices. But because that’s who I am.”

“Wow.”

“Got deep there, didn’t I?”

“Yeah.”

“Well?”

Gemma shakes her head. “My answer will sound stupid after that.”

“No backing out now, whore.”

Gemma takes another inhale of her cigarette. “My grandmother always said, everything happens for a reason. I never believed it. Until. Well, until about two months ago.”

Eve raises her eyebrows, nods, and takes another inhale. “Yeah, that did sound stupid.”

“What will you do now?”

Before Eve can try to scrape together an answer to that question, there’s a sound of cries on the monitor. Saved by the bell.

While they take refuge in the warm house and tag team the fussy baby, Eve’s mind is running in overdrive. _What will you do now?_

Huge question.

* * *

Villanelle is due any minute now.

Eve and Gemma putter around the first floor, feeding each other’s nervous energy. It’s not just that every minute she’s later than expected is a minute that means she may have been caught. A far greater worry is that the sparsely furnished ranch house won’t meet Villanelle’s approval.

As they packed Gemma’s entire life into boxes, Villanelle spent hours waxing poetic about the sort of grand house she always pictured since she was a child. Unlike Gemma and Eve, this will be Villanelle’s first time having a house that’s _hers_ in any sense; not a mere apartment, not underwritten by the Twelve. If it doesn’t live up to her daydreams, will she have nothing but disdain for the place?

Some rustling and thumping from outside spurs their anxious pacing towards the front door. The house is at the end of a forested road, so any sound outside is either a visitor or a wild animal.

There’s no doorbell yet, so the frantic knocking must be Villanelle, or else a remarkably impatient bear.

Eve unlocks the deadbolt, Gemma creeping at her side. and before she’s even opened the door fully, she’s bowled over as Villanelle greets them with a bear hug, then a kiss on the cheek, each.

Eve takes her bags while Gemma leads Villanelle inside. Once the bags are tucked away, Eve follows while Gemma shows Villanelle the living room, with only a simple couch and a used television someone in town was giving away. The kitchen, with hardly more than a fridge, oven, and kettle. The bathroom (only one full bath, no improvement over Gemma’s house there), the nursery, and the bedroom, rather empty besides the new queen bed.

Villanelle is quiet for most of the tour.

“So?” Gemma asks, eventually. Antsy for a response. “What do you think?”

Eve’s heart catches in her throat while Villanelle swivels her head around, appraising the rooms again. She shouldn’t be this nervous about a stupid house that isn’t even outfitted yet anyway. But the real test isn’t _does it work_ , it’s _will it work?_ Will any of this work outside of outside of those tumultuous four months when they hid from killers that cozy, knick-knacked house in London?

Villanelle picks at the wallpaper. Kicks the baseboard. Picks at a hole in the upholstery on the couch. Her jaw is set, her expression unreadable.

Finally, she looks up, from Eve to Gemma, and softens.

“It’s home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gotta say a big thank you to everyone who gave this fic a chance and came along on the journey. the concept was weird, even for ME, but I had a wonderful time finding the unexpected tender moments along the way. I really expected to be writing this one only for myself, so thanks to the few that gave this odd ot3 a shot!
> 
> no concrete plans for a follow up, but I can't resist the domestic bliss of a happy ending, so follow me on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) as I'll probably be posting some headcanons and snippets of Canada life... 
> 
> thanks again, love you all a lot xo
> 
> P.S. almost forgot here's the [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2BbBTQgHQimvgCEuJTkKPs) one more time because it's vibes!!!


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